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John Milton 



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SELECTED POEMS 



OF 



JOHN MILTON 



L' ALLEGRO, COMUS, 
IL PENSEROSO, LYCIDAS 



EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY 

CLARA H. WHITMORE, A.M. 

TEACHER OF ENGLISH IN THE CURTIS HIGH SCHOOL 
NEW YORK CITY 



UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON . NEW ORLEANS 



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COPY Q. 



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CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION— 

Life of Milton 9 

Versification 31 

Suggestions to Teachers 42 

L'ALLEGRO 44 

IL PENSEROSO 52 

COMUS 60 

LYCIDAS 103 



INTRODUCTION. 

THE LIFE OF MILTON. 

John Milton was born in Bread Street, Cheapside, London, 
December 9, 1608. His grandfather, Richard Milton, was a 
yeoman of Stanton St. John, a little village about five miles 
from Oxford. He was so ardent a Catholic, that he disin- 
herited his son John, the poet's father, for reading the Bible 
in English. This son went up to London, where he be- 
came an attorney and law stationer, and by his industry, 
soon amassed a substantial fortune. 

But of more importance to the poet was the fact that his 
father was a man of broad culture, who had won consider- 
able fame as a musical composer. Milton, in a Latin poem, 
Ad Patrem, pays this tribute to his father : 

Now say, what wonder is it if a son 

Of thine delight in verse, if so conjoined 

In close affinity, we sympathize 

In social arts and kindred studies sweet ? 

Such distribution of himself to us 

Was Phoebus' choice ; thou hast thy gift and 

Mine also ; and between us we receive, 

Father and son, the whole inspiring god. 



My Father ! who, when I had opened once 

The stores of Roman rhetoric, and learned 

The full-toned language of the eloquent Greeks, 

Whose lofty music graced the lips of Jove, 

Tli3*self didst counsel me to add the flowers 

That Gallia boasts, those, too, with which the smooth 

Italian his degenerate speech adorns, 

That witnesses his mixture with the Goth ; 

And Palestine's prophetic songs divine. 

Cooper's Translation. 
9 



10 MILTON. 

Milton passed his early life amid the refinements of his 
own home. He received part of his education from a 
Scottish preacher, Thomas Young, and part at the famous 
school of St. Paul's, which he attended as a day pupil. 
Here he formed the friendship with Charles Diodati, his 
letters to whom furnish such an intimate picture of the 
poet. In 1625, while Milton was in his seventeenth year, 
he entered Christ's College, Cambridge, where he remained 
seven years, receiving the degrees of B.A. and M.A 
During these years, Milton wrote many verses worthy of 
his genius, among them being the Ode on the Morning of 
Christ's Nativity. 

At this time, Milton thus wrote to his friend, Charles 
Diodati : 

" But the man who speaks of high matters — the heaven of 
the full-grown Jove, and pious heroes, and demigod leaders 
of men, the man who now sings the holy counsels of the 
gods above, and now the subterranean realms guarded by 
the fierce dog — let him live sparely, after the manner of 
the Samian master ; let herbs afford him his innocent diet, 
let clear water in a beechen cup stand near him, and let him 
drink sober draughts from a pure fountain ! To this be 
there added a youth chaste and free from guilt, and rigid 
morals, and hands without stain. Being such thou shalt 
rise up, glittering in sacred raiment, and purified by lustral 
waters, an augur, about to go into the presence of the un- 
offended gods. 

" For the poet is sacred and the priest of the gods ; and 
his heart and his mouth breathe the indwelling Jove. 

" And now, if you will know what I am myself doing (if 
indeed you think it is of so much consequence to know if I 
am doing anything), here is the fact : we are engaged in sing- 
ing the heavenly birth of the King of Peace, and the happy 



INTRODUCTION. 31 

age promised by the holy books, and the infant cries and 
cradling in a manger under a poor roof of that God who 
rules, with his Father, the Kingdom of Heaven, and the 
sky with the new-sprung star in it, and the ethereal choirs 
of hymning angels, and the gods of the heathen suddenly 
fleeing to their endangered fanes. This is the gift which 
we have presented to Christ's natal day." 

But at this time of his life, Milton seems not to have ful- 
filled his own expectations or those of his friends, and in 
the following sonnet he laments the slow ripening of his 
powers : 

ON HIS BEING ARRIVED TO THE AGE OF TWENTY- 
THREE. 

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, 
Stol'n on his wing my three and twentieth year ! 
My hasting days fly on with full career, 
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. 

Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth, 
That I to manhood am arriv'd so near, 
And inward ripeness doth much less appear, 
That some more timely-happy spirits indu'th. 

Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, 
It shall be still in strictest measure even 
To that same lot, however mean or high, 

Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven. 
All is, if I have grace to use it so, 
As ever in my great Task-master's eye. 

In 1632, Milton left the University and retired to Horton, 
a little village about twenty miles from London, near 
Windsor. Here he wrote many of his minor poems. Al- 
though the spirit of these poems is Puritan, yet they show 
how deeply Milton's mind was imbued with the Greek and 
Roman classics. He gave to two of his poems, L' Allegro 
and II Penseroso, Italian names, but modern Italy and France 
had but little hold upon his imagination. But even at 



12 MILTON. 

this time, while dominated by the influence of Greek and 
Roman literature, Milton was essentially English, and 
traces of his reading of English authors can be constantly 
found in the poems of this period. 

In September, 1687, just before the writing of Lycidas,. 
Milton wrote from Horton to his friend Diodati : 

" What besides God has resolved concerning me, I know 
not, but this at least : He has instilled into me, if into any 
one, a vehement love of the beautiful. Not with so much 
labor, as the fables have it, is Ceres said to have sought her 
daughter Proserpina, as it is my habit day and night to seek 
for this idea of the beautiful, as for a certain image of supreme- 
beauty, through all the forms and faces of things (for many are 
the shapes of things divine), and to follow it as it leads me 
on by some sure traces which I seem to recognize. 

"But now I know you wish to have your curiosity 
satisfied. You make many anxious enquiries as to what I 
am at present thinking of. Hearken, Theodotus, but let it 
be in thy private ear, lest I blush ; and allow me for a little 
to use big language with you. You ask Avhat I am think- 
ing of ? So may the good deity help me, of immortality. " 

Milton's mother died in 1637. He then became anxious- 
to travel on the Continent. With letters of introduction to 
many persons of rank and learning, and attended by one 
servant, he visited Paris, Nice, Genoa, Leghorn, Pisa, 
Florence, Siena, Rome, and Naples. Again we can turn to 
Milton's own writings for an account of his travels and their 
conclusion : 

" When I was preparing to pass over into Sicily and 
Greece, the melancholy intelligence which I received of the 
civil commotions in England made me alter my purpose * 
for I thought it base to be travelling for amusement abroad,, 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

while my fellow-citizens were fighting for liberty at home. 
While I was on my way back to Rome, some merchants 
informed me that the English Jesuits had formed a plot 
against me, if I returned to Rome, because I had spoken too 
freely on religion ; for it was a rule which I laid down to 
myself in those places, never to be the first to begin any 
conversation on religion ; but if any question were put to me 
concerning my faith, to declare it without any reserve or 
fear. I nevertheless returned to Rome. I took no steps to 
conceal either my person or my character ; and for about 
the space of two months, I again openly defended, as I had 
done before, the reformed religion in the very metropolis of 
popery. By the favour of God, I got safe back to Florence, 
where I was received with as much affection as if I had 
returned to my native country." 

After visiting Venice, Milan and Geneva, Milton returned 
to England, having been gone a little over a year. 

There is no grander renunciation in history than that 
made at this time by Milton. He had consecrated his life to 
postry, and was not only dreaming of immortality, but was 
conscious of the power within himself to win it. But greater 
than his love for the beautiful, was the love of liberty ; and 
greater than his love of art was his love for his country. 
For twenty years, he devoted all the strength of his genius 
to the cause of English freedom. He says of this period of 
his life : 

" I saw that a Avay was opening for the establishment of 
real liberty ; that the foundation was laying for the deliver- 
ance of man from the yoke of slavery and superstition ; 
that the principles of religion, which were the first object of 
our care, Avould exert a salutary influence on the manners 
and constitution of the republic ; and as I had from my 
youth studied the distinctions between religious and civil 
rights, I perceived that if I ever wished to be of use, I ought 



14 MILTON. 

at least not to be wanting to my country, to the Church 
and to so many of my fellow-Christians, in a crisis of so 
much clanger ; I therefore determined to relinquish the other 
pursuits in which I was engaged, and to transfer the whole 
force of my talents and my industry to this one important 
object." 

Early at this time, however, when Milton had taken his 
stand with the Parliamentarians against the King, in 1643, 
at the age of thirty-five, he married Mary Powell, aged 
seventeen, the daughter of a Royalist. After a month's 
residence in Milton's home she suddenly left him and 
returned to her father's house. Whether she found the life 
in a Puritan household too austere, or whether her people 
feared that they would lose influence at Court through a 
son-in-law who was a pronounced enemy of the King, is not 
known. But Milton, thus abandoned by his wife, wrote a 
pamphlet entitled : " The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce 
Restored, to the Good of Both Sexes." This brought him 
into disfavor with his own party, and he was denounced as a 
heretic by his former friends. So little influenced was 
Milton by the storm his pamphlet had raised, that he was 
about to put his theories into practice and marry a second 
time, when, after an absence of two years, his wife returned 
to him. 

His treatise on Divorce was followed by a Tract on Educa- 
tion, and this by his " Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty 
of Unlicensed Printing," in which he made a strong appeal 
against the censorship of the press. 

When Charles I. was executed in 1649, Milton at once 
adhered to the Republic, and published a pamphlet with 
this heading: "Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, proving that 
it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any 
who have the power to call to account a Tyrant or Wicked 
King, and, after due conviction, to depose and put him to 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

death, if the ordinary magistrate have neglected to do it." 
Soon after this, Milton was appointed Latin Secretary to 
the Commonwealth, a position which he held until the Res- 
toration. His most important work while holding this 
office, was his Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, Defence of the 
English People, written in Latin, in reply to an attack made 
upon the English Commonwealth by a Leyden professor, Sal- 
masius, in which he arraigned the English people for regicide. 
Milton's reply was so powerful that it spread his fame 
throughout Europe. 

This last, however, was fraught with serious result to 
Milton ; for he wrote it while his eyesight was failing, and 
in 1G52, the year following its publication, he became totally 
blind. 

One of the most beautiful of his sonnets was written 
not long after he had lost his sight. 

ON HIS BLINDNESS. 

When I consider how my light is spent 

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, 
And that one talent which is death to hide, 
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent 

To serve therewith my Maker, and present 
My true account, lest he returning chide ; 
" Doth God exact day-labour, light denied ? " 
I fondly ask : But Patience, to prevent 

That murmur, soon replies, " God doth not need 
Either man's work, or his own gifts. Who best 
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best : his state 

Is kingly ; thousands at his bidding speed, 
And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; 
They also serve who only stand and wait." 

In 1653, Milton's wife died, leaving him with three 
daughters, the eldest not eight years old. In 1656, he mar- 
ried Catherine Woodcock, who died in childbirth only fifteen 
months after her marriage. His beautiful sonnet to her, 
shows the esteem with which he regarded her: 



Ifi MILTON. 

ON HIS DECEASED WIFE. 

Me thought I saw my late espoused saint 
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave. 
Whom Jove's great son to her glad hushand gave, 
Rescued from death by force though pale and faint. 
Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint 
Purification in the old Law did save, 
And such as yet once more I trust to have 
Full sight of her in heaven without restraint, 
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind. 
Her face was veiled ; yet to my fancied sight 
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined 
So clear as in no face with more delight. 
But oh ! as to embrace me she inclined, 
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night. 

After the Restoration of Charles II. to the throne of 
England, Milton thought it wise to remain for a time in con- 
cealment. He must have had many powerful friends in Par- 
liament at this time, for in some miraculous manner, he 
escaped punishment. Masson says of this : 

"The wonder is that, at the Restoration, Milton was 
rot hanged. At a time when they brought to the scaffold 
all the chief living Regicides and their accomplices that 
were within reach, including even Hugh Peters, and when 
they dug up Cromwell's body and hanged it at Tyburn, and 
tore also from the earth at Westminster the body of Crom- 
well's mother and other Cromwellian bodies that had been 
buried there with honor, the escape of Milton, the supreme 
defender of the Regicides through the press, the man who had 
attacked the memory of Charles I., with a ferocity which 
even some of the actual Regicides must have thought unne- 
cessary and outrageous, is all but inexplicable." 

When he was fifty-four years old, Milton married his 
third wife, Elizabeth Minshull. She seems to have brought 
peace and happiness into his disordered household Four 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

years later, in 1G67, his great epic, Paradise Lost, was 
published. Once more Milton became the hero of the hour. 
Even his bitterest enemies realized that a poet of the rank 
of Homer and Dante was living among them. The following 
lines of P. L., vi. 29-37, to one of the seraphim, are auto- 
biographical : 

Servant of God, well done ! Well hast thou fought 

The better fight, who single hast maintained 

Against revolted multitudes the cause 

Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms, 

And for the testimony of truth hast borne 

Universal reproach, far worse to bear 

Than violence ; for this was all thy care — 

To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds 

Judged thee perverse. 

This epic was followed by Paradise Regained, and Samson 
Agonistes. In the blind Samson, the foe to the Philistines, 
Milton himself saw many resemblances to his own life. Milton 
died in Nov. 1674, and was buried beside his father in the 
Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate. The following lines by 
Dryden, poet laureate at the time, show how Milton was 
regarded at his death : 

MILTON'S ACHIEVEMENT. 

Three poets in three distant ages born, 
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. 
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed ; 
The next in majesty ; in both the last. 
The force of nature could no further go. 
To make a third, she joined the former two. 

JOHN DRYDEN. 



18 



MILTON. 



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INTRODUCTION. -^ 

Milton ! thou shouldst be living at this hour : 
England hath need of thee : she is a fen 
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, 
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, 

Have forfeited their ancient English dower 
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men ; 
O, raise ns up, return to us again ; 
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power ! 

Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart : 
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea ; 
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, 

So didst thou travel on life's common way, 
In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart 
The lowliest duties on herself did lay. 

William Wordsworth, 

O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, 
O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, 
God-gifted organ-voice of England, 
Milton, a name to resound for ages, 
Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, 
Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armouries, 
Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean 
Rings to the roar of an angel onset— 
Me rather all that bowery loneliness, 
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring, 
And bloom profuse and cedar arches 
Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, 
Where some refulgent sunset of India 
Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle, 
And crimson-hued the stately palm woods 
Whisper in odorous heights of even. 

Alfred Tennyson, 

He left the upland lawns and serene air 
Wherefrom his soul her noble nurture drew, 
And reared his helm among the unquiet crew 

Battling beneath ; the morning radiance rare 

Of his young brow amid the tumult there 
Grew grim with sulphurous dust and sanguine clew ; 



20 MILTON. 

Yet through all soilure they who marked him knew 
The signs of his life's dayspring, calm and fair. 
But when peace came, peace fouler far than war, 
And mirth more dissonant than battle's tone, 
He, with a scornful sign of his clear soul, 
Back to his mountain clomb, now bleak and frore, 
And with the awful night he dwelt alone, 
In darkness, listening to the thunder's roll. 

Ernest Myers. 

In the Allegro and Penseroso we have poetry in its most 
qniet intellectual essence, neither elevated into song by the 
lyric passion, nor recommended to non-poetic tastes by the 
occasional interfusion of pungent particles of doctrine. 
They belong, on the whole, to the idyllic or sensuous-ideal 
class of compositions, in which we see the poet relaxing 
himself for his own pleasure in the calmest possible exercise 
of his peculiar intellectual habit. In few poems in our lan- 
guage could the nature of the purely poetic or imaginative 
mode of cogitation be better studied ; and, in the fact that 
these two poems of such pure and unperturbed phantasy 
were written by Milton at this particular period of his life, 
we seem to have an indication that, in his retirement to 
Horton, he felt himself induced by his new circumstances to 
lay to sleep for the time certain dogmatic elements in his 
constitution, which had necessarily appeared in his conduct 
and in his writings amid the bustle of the University, and 
to cultivate, in his own compositions, though not exclusively 
in his reading, the one dear gift which he preferred of all 
his endowments. 

Massox, Life of John Milton, vol. I, p. 457. 

So far as the scenery in the Allegro and Penseroso is 
taken from any one place, the credit may be given to Horton 
and its neighborhood. In the morning scene in the Allegro, 
nearly all the details of the landscape are such as Horton 
would furnish to this day ; and though other localities in 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

southern England would furnish most of them quite as well, 
one or two might be claimed by Horton as not so common. 
The "towers and battlements" 

"Bosomed high in tufted trees," 
are almost evidently Windsor Castle ; and a characteristic 
morning sound at Horton to this day, we are told, is that of 
" the hounds and horn " from Windsor Park, when the royal 
huntsmen are out. That Milton, however, did not adhere 
and did not mean to adhere to local truth of detail, — in other 
words, that the poem was intended not as the description of 
any actual scene, but as the generalized visual illustration 
of a mood, and so as something higher in kind than any 
mere description, — is seen from his 

Mountains, on whose barren breast 
The laboring clouds do often rest," — 

a feature for which the scenery of Horton furnishes no 
original. So, in the Penseroso, the sound of the distant roar 
of the sea is, as regards any part of Buckinghamshire, 
equally ideal The Gothic cathedral, in whose cloisters the 
pensive man walks in the morning, is also, of course, an 
addition to Horton from recollections of other places. With 
these exceptions, the landscape of the Penseroso may be that 
of the Allegro made melancholy by moonlight. 

Masson, Life of Milton, vol. I, p. 459. 

COMUS. 

A castle in massive ruins, situated on a rocky height, and 
commanding, especially to the north, a beautiful and ex- 
tensive prospect, and, adjoining this castle, though separated 
from it by a wall, a town of clean, and somewhat (plaint 
streets, descending the gentle slopes of the hill or winding 
at its base, and crowned by a large and lofty parish church 
— such is Ludlow now ; and such was Ludlow two hundred 
and thirty years ago, save that then the castle was not in 



22 MILTON. 

ruins, that there were barracks for soldiers in the court- 
yard, and that the town exhibited the bustle attendant on the 
presence in it of the Lord President and his retinue. 

The castle is now a crumbling ruin, along the ivy-clad 
walls and through the dark passages of which the visitor 
clambers or gropes his way, disturbing the crows and the 
martlets in their recesses ; but one can stand yet in the door- 
way through which the parting guests of that night de- 
scended into the inner court ; and one can see where the 
stage was, on which the sister was lost by her brothers, and 
Comus revelled with his crew, and the lady was fixed as 
marble by enchantment, and Sabrina arose with her water- 
nymphs, and the swains danced in welcome of the earl, and 
the Spirit gloriously ascended to its native heavens. More 
mystic it is to leave the ruins, and, descending one of the 
Avinding streets that lead from the castle into the valley of 
the Teme, to look upwards to castle and town seen as one 
picture, and, marking more expressly the three long pointed 
windows that gracefully slit the chief face of the wall to- 
wards the north, to realize that it was from that ruin, and 
from those windows in the ruin, that the verse of Comus 
Avas first shook into the air of England. " 

Masson's Life of Milton, pp. 482-497. 

But it is in Comus that, if I have any skill of criticism, 
Milton's poetical power is at its greatest height. Those 
who judge poetry on the ground of bulk, or of originality 
of theme, or of anything else extra-poetical, — much more 
those (the greater number) who simply vary transmitted 
ideas, — may be scandalized at this assertion, but that will 
hardly matter much. And indeed the indebtedness of 
Comus in point of subject (it is probably limited to the 
Odyssey, which . is public property, and to George Peele's 
Old Wives'' Tale, which gave little but a few hints of story) 



INTRODUCTION. 93 

is scarcely greater than that of Paradise Lost ; while the 
form of the drama, a kind nearly as venerable and majestic 
as that of the epic, is completely filled. And in Comns 
there is none of the stiffness, none of the longueurs, none of 
the almost ludicrous want of humour, which mar the larger 
poem. Humour indeed was what Milton always lacked; 
had he had it, Shakespeare himself might hardly have been 
greater. The plan is not really more artificial than that of 
the epic ; though in the latter case it is masked to us by 
the scale, by the grandeur of the personages, and by the 
familiarity of the images to all men who have been brought 
up on the Bible. The versification, as even Johnson saw, 
is the versification of Paradise Post, and to my fancy at 
any rate it has a spring, a variety, a sweep and rush of 
genius, which are but rarely present later. As for its 
beauty in parts, quis vituperavit? It is impossible to single 
out passages, for the whole is golden. The entering address 
of Com us, the song " Sweet Echo," the descriptive speech 
of the Spirit, and the magnificent eulogy of the " sun-clad 
power of chastity," would be the most beautiful things 
where all is beautiful, if the unapproachable " Sabrina fair " 
did not come later, and were not sustained before and after, 
for nearly two hundred lines of pure nectar. If poetry 
could be taught by the reading of it, then indeed the critic's 
advice to a poet might be limited to this: "Give your days 
and nights to the reading of Comus. 

Saixtsbury's hlizabeihtown Literature. 



LYCIDAS. 

Of all Milton's smaller poems, P^ijoidas is the greatest 
favourite with me. I cannot agree to the charge which Dr. 
Johnson has brought against it of pedantry and Avant of 
feeling. It is the fine emanation of classical sentiment in a 
youthful scholar — "most musical, most melancholy." A 



24, MILTON. 

certain tender gloom overspreads it, a wayward abstraction, 
a forgetfulness of his subject in the serious reflections that 
arise out of it. The gusts of passion come and go like the 
sounds of music borne on the wind. The loss of the friend 
whose death the lament seems to have recalled, with double 
force, the reality of those speculations which they had in- 
dulged together ; we are transported to classic ground, and a 
mysterious strain steals responsive on the ear, while we 
listen to the poet, 

" With eager thought warbling liis Doric lay.'' 

I shall proceed to give a few passages at length in support 
of my opinion. The first I shall quote is as remarkable for 
the truth and sweetness of the natural descriptions as for 
the characteristic elegance of the allusions. [Lines 25-49 
quoted.] 

After the line apostrophe on Fame which Phoebus is in- 
volved to utter, the poet proceeds : [Lines 85-99 quoted.] 
If this is art, it is perfect art ; nor do w r e wish for anything 
better. The measure of the verse, the very sound of the 
names, would almost produce the effect here described. 
To ask the poet not to make use of such allusions as these 
is to ask the painter not to dip in the colours of the 
rainbow, if he could. — In fact, it is the common cant of 
criticism to consider every allusion to the classics, and 
particularly in a mind like Milton's, as pedantry and affec- 
tation. Habit is a second nature ; and, in this sense, the 
pedantry (if it is to be so called) of the scholastic enthusiast, 
who is constantly referring to images of which his mind is 
full, is as graceful as it is natural. It is not affectation in 
him to recur to ideas and modes of expression with which 
he has the strongest associations, and in which he takes the 
greatest delight. Milton was as conversant with the world 
of genius before him as with the world of nature about 
him; the fables of the ancient mythology were as familiar 



INTRODUCTION. 25 

to him as his dreams. To be a pedant is to see neither the 
beauties of nature nor of art. Milton saw both; and he 

made use of the one only to adorn and give interest to the 
oilier, lie was a passionate admirer of nature; and, in a 
single couplet of his, describing the moon, — 

" Like one that had been led astray 
Through the heaven's wide pathless way,"— 

there is more intense observation, and intense feeling of 
nature (as if he had gazed himself blind in looking at her,) 
than in twenty volumes of descriptive poetry. But he 
added in his own observation of nature the splendid fictions 
of ancient genius, enshrined her in the mysteries of ancient 
religion, and celebrated her with the pomp of ancient names. 
Hazlitt's Lectures on th>> English Poets. 

And now, merely for example's sake, I will, with your 
permission, read a few lines of a true book with you care- 
fully, and see what will come out of them. I will take a 
book perfectly known to you all. No English words are 
more familiar to us, yet few perhaps have been read with 
less sincerity. I will take these few following lines of 
" Lycidas " :— 

" Last came, and last did go, 
The pilot of the Galilean lake. 
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, 
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain,) 
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake : 
' How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, 
Enow of such as for their bellies' sake 
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold ! 
Of other care they little reckoning make 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 
And shove away the worthy bidden guest ; 
Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 
A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else, the least 
That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs ! 
What recks it them ? What need they ? They are sped ; 



26 MILTON. 

Arid when they list, their lean and flashy songs 
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw. 
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, 
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread, 
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.'" 

Let us think over this passage, and examine its words. 

First, is it not singular to find Milton assigning to Saint 
Peter not only his full episcopal function, but the very- 
types of it which Protestants usually refuse most passion- 
ately ? His " mitred " locks ! Milton was no bishop-lover ; 
how comes Saint Peter to be " mitred " ? " Two massy 
keys he bore." Is this, then, the power of the keys 
claimed by the bishops of Rome, and is it acknowledged 
here by Milton only in a poetical license, for the sake of its 
picturesqueness, that he may get the gleam of the golden 
keys to help his effect ? Do not think it. Great men do 
not play stage tricks with the doctrines of life and death ; 
only little men do that. Milton means what he says, and 
means it with his might, too, — is going to put the whole 
strength of his spirit presently into the saying of it. For 
though not a lover of false bishops, he was a lover of true 
ones ; and the Lake-pilot is here, in his thoughts, the type 
and head of true episcopal power. For Milton reads that 
text, " I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of 
Heaven " quite honestly. Puritan though he be, he would 
not blot it out of the book because there have been bad 
bishops, — nay, in order to understand him, we must under- 
stand that verse first ; it will not do to eye it askance, or 
whisper it under our breath, as if it were a weapon of an 
adverse sect. It is a solemn, universal assertion, deeply to 
be kept in mind by all sects. But perhaps we shall be 
better able to reason on it if Ave go a little farther, and come 
back to it. For clearly this marked insistence on the power 
of the true episcopate is to make us feel more weightily 



INTRODUCTION. 27 

what is to be charged against the false claimants of epis- 
copate, or generally, against false claimants of power and 
rank in the body of the clergy, they who " for their bellies' 
sake creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold." 

Never think Milton uses those three words to fill up his 
verse, as a loose writer would. He needs all the three, — 
specially those three, and no more than those, — " creep " 
and "intrude" and "climb"; no other words would or 
could serve the turn, and no more could be added. For 
they exhaustively comprehend the three classes, corre- 
spondent to the three characters, of men who dishonestly 
seek ecclesiastical power. First, those who " creep " into 
the fold, who do not care for office, nor name, but for secret 
influence, and do all things occultly and cunningly, consent- 
ing to any servility of office or conduct, so only that they 
may intimately discern, and unawares direct, the minds of 
men. Then those who "intrude" (thrust, that is) them- 
selves into the fold, who by natural insolence of heart, and 
stout eloquence of tongue, and fearlessly perse ve rant self- 
assertion, obtain hearing and authority with the common 
crowd. Lastly, those who "climb," who, by labor and learn- 
ing both stout and sound, but selfishly exerted in the cause 
of their own ambition, gain high dignities and authorities, 
and become " lords over the heritage," though not " en- 
samples to the flock." 

Now go on : 

" Of other care they little reckoning make 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast. 
Blind mouths — " 

I pause again, for this is a strange expression, — a broken 
metaphor, one might think, careless and unscholarly. 

Not so ; its very audacity and pithiness are intended to 
make us look close at the phrase and remember it. Those 
two monosyllables express the precisely accurate contraries 



S MILTON. 

of right character in the two great offices of the Church, — 
those of bishop and pastor. 

A "bishop" means "a person who sees." 

A "pastor" means "a person who feeds. 11 

The most unhishoply character a man can have is there- 
fore to he blind. 

The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want to be 
fed, — to be a mouth. 

Take the two reverses together, and you have "blind 
mouths." We may advisably follow out this idea a little. 
Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from bishops 
desiring power more than light. They want authority, not 
outlook ; whereas their real office is not to rule, though it 
may be vigorously to exhort and rebuke. It is the king's 
office to rule ; the bishop's office is to oversee the flock, to 
number it, sheep by sheep, to be ready always to give full 
account of it. Now, it is clear lie cannot give account of 
the souls, if he has not so much as numbered the bodies, of 
his flock. The first tiling, therefore, that a bishop has to do 
is at least to put himself in a position in which, at any mo- 
ment, he can obtain the history, from childhood, of every 
living soul in his diocese, and of its present state. Down 
in that back street, Bill and Nancy knocking each other's 
teeth out, — does the bishop know all about it? Has he 
his eye upon them? Has he had his eye upon them ? Can 
he circumstantially explain to us how Bill got into the 
habit of beating Nancy about the head? If he cannot, he 
is no bishop^ though he had a mitre as high as Salisbury 
steeple; he is no bishop, — he has sought to be at the 
helm instead of the masthead ; he has no sight of 
things. " Nay," you say, " it is not his duty to look after 
Bill in the back street." What ! the fat sheep that have 
full fleeces, — you think it is only those he should look after 
while (go back to your Milton) " the hungry sheep look up, 
and are not fed, besides what the grim wolf, with privy 



INTRODUCTION. 29 

paw" (bishops knowing nothing about it) "d:iily devours 
apace, and nothing said " ? 

k * But that's not our idea of a bishop." Perhaps not ; but 
it was St. Paul's, and it was Milton's. They may be right, 
or we may be; but we must not think we arc reading either 
one or the other by putting our meaning into their words. 

I go on. 

" But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw." 

This is to meet the vulgar answer that "if the poor are 
not looked after in their bodies, they are in their souls; they 
have spiritual food." 

And Milton says, "They have no such thing as spiritual 
food ; they are only swollen with wind." At first you may 
think that is a coarse type, and an obscure one. But again, 
it is a quite literally accurate one. Take up your Latin and 
Greek dictionaries and find out the meaning of " Spirit." 
It is only a contraction of the Latin word " breath," and 
an indistinct translation of the Greek word for " wind." 
The same word is used in writing, "The wind bloweth 
where it listeth," and in writing, " So is every one that is 
born in the Spirit; " born of the breath, that is, for it means 
the breath of God in soul and body. We have the true 
sense of it in our words " inspiration" and " expire." Now, 
there are two kinds of breath with which the flock may be 
filled, — God's breath and man's. The breath of God is 
health and life and peace to them, as the air of heaven is to 
the flocks on the hills; but man's breath — the word which 
he calls spiritual — is disease and contagion to them, as the 
fog of the fen. They rot inwardly with it ; they are putted 
up by it, as a dead body by the vapors of its own decompo- 
sition. This is literally true of all false religious teaching; 
the first and last and fatalest sign of it is that " puffing 
up." Your converted children, who teach their parents; 
your converted convicts, who teach honest men; your con- 



30 MILTON. 

verte dunces, who, having lived in cretinous stupefaction 
half their lives, suddenly awaking to the fact of there being 
a God, fancy themselves therefore His peculiar people and 
messengers ; your sectarians of every species, small and 
great, Catholic or Protestant, of High Church or Low, in 
so far as they think themselves exclusively in the right and 
others wrong ; and pre-eminently, in every sect, those who 
hold that men can be saved by thinking rightly instead of* 
doing rightly, by work instead of act, and wish instead of 
work, — these are the true fog children ; clouds, these, with- 
out water ; bodies, these, of putrescent vapor and skin 
without blood or flesh, blown bagpipes for the fiends to 
pipe with, corrupt and corrupting, " Swoln with wind, and 
the rank mist they draw," 

Lastly, let us return to the lines respecting the power of 
the keys, for now we can understand them. Note the dif- 
ference between Milton and Dante, in their interpretation 
of this power ; for once the latter is weaker in thought. 
He supposes both the keys to be of the gate of heaven ; one 
is of gold, the other of silver. They are given by Saint 
Peter to the sentinel angel ; and it is not easy to determine 
the meaning either of the substances of the three steps of 
the gate, or of the two keys. But Milton makes one, of 
gold, the key of heaven, the other, of iron, the key of the 
prison in which the wicked teachers are to be bound avIio 
"have taken away the key of knowledge, yet entered not 
in themselves." 

We have seen that the duties of bishop and pastor are to 
see and feed, and of all who do so it is said, " He that water- 
eth, shall be watered also himself." But the reverse is 
truth also. He that watereth not, shall be withered himself ; 
and he that seeth not, shall himself be shut out of sight, — 
shut into the perpetual prison-house. And that prison 
opens here as well as hereafter ; he who is to be bound in 
heaven must first be bound on earth. That command to 



INTRODUCTION. 31 

the strong angels, of which the rock-apostle is the image, 
" Take him, and land him hand and foot, and cast him out," 
issues, in its measure, against the teacher, for every help 
withheld, and for every truth refused, and for every false- 
hood enforced ; so that he is more strictly fettered the more 
he fetters, and farther outcast as he more and more mis- 
leads, till at last the bars of the iron cage close upon him, 
and as " the golden opes, the iron shuts amain." 

Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies. 

VERSIFICATION. 

There is music in speech as well as in song. Poetry is 
superior to prose in so far as it has this additional quality 
of music. Milton knew how to play upon this instrument 
of English language, and to bring from it sounds as varied 
as Orpheus could strike from his lyre or St. Cecilia could 
draw from her organ. He knew the musical quality hidden 
in words better even than Shakespeare. The student of 
Milton cannot comprehend the beauty of his poetry, nor the 
genius of the poet, without studying the art of Milton's ver- 
sification. 

" There are five requisites to English poetry : accent, the 
cassural pause, number of syllables to the line, quantity, and 
the adaptation of words to sense. These will be considered 
in their due order. 

In all speech, there is rhythm, or a succession of accented 
and unaccented syllables. This is true of prose as well as of 
poetry, as can be shown by marking the accented syllables of 
any printed page, or by observing the stressed syllables in 
ordinary conversation. In English poetry, accented and 
unaccented syllables follow each other in regular succession 
according to established laws. 

The verse is the unit in poetry. A verse is one poetic 
line, so called from the Latin verb, verto (pp. versus), to 



32 MILTON. 

turn, since at the end of the line, the reader turns hack 
while prose comes from Latin prosus, straight ahead. Each 
verse is made up of a certain number of parts called feet. 
A foot consists of two or three syllables. Feet are divided 
into seven classes, depending upon the number of syllables, 
and place of accent. 

An iambus is a foot of two syllables with the accent on 
the last, as forlorn. About live sixths of all English poetry 
is written in the iambic measure. 

A trochee is a foot of two syllables with the accent on 
the first, as blackest. 

A 8}><>u<l< c is a foot of two syllables, both of which are ac- 
cented, as, G6 see. 

Apyrrhic is a foot of two syllables, both of which are un- 
accented. It is sometimes marked with the breve, since the 
syllables are usually short; or it may be left unmarked, as, 
Of Cer | berus | . 

From the nature of the English language, it will readily 
be seen, that poetry could not be written entirely in the 
pyrrhic or spondaic measure. 

A dactyl is a foot of three syllables, with the accent on the 
first, as hdpefully. 

An anapest is a foot of three syllables, with the accent on 
the last, as she is gone. 

An amphibrach is a foot of three syllables with the accent 
on the second, as remorseful. 

In poetry the amphibrach is seldom used, and it can usu- 
ally be reduced to one of the other forms. 

A verse may consist of any number of feet from one to 
eight, and is known as follows : 

Monometer, verse of one foot. 
Dimeter, verse of two feet. 
Trimeter, verse of three feet. 
Tetrameter, verse of four feet. 



INTRODUCTION. 33 

Pentameter^ verse of five feet. 
Hexameter, verse of six feet. 
Ifeptameter, verse of seven feet 
Octameter, verse of eight feet. 

A verse is also called iambic, trochaic, dactylic or ana- 
pestic, from its prevailing fool 

In Styg | ian cave | forlorn | . L'A, 3 Iambic trimeter. 

To some | thing like | prophet | ic strain. II. P. 174. 
Iambic tetrameter. 

Of si | lence through | the emp | ty vault | ed night | 
C. 250. Iambic pentameter. 

Hail, di | vinest | melan | choly. II. P. 12. Trochaic te- 
trameter. 

A pause in the middle of the verse is called a caesura. 
It may occur in any part of the verse, even in the middle of 
a foot, and is usually marked by a double line. Sometimes 
there are two caesural pauses in a verse. 

What ! || have you let the false enchanter scape V 
O ye mistook ; || ye should have snatched his wand, 
And bound him fast. || Without his rod reversed, 
And backward mutters || of dissevering power, 
We cannot free the lady || that sits here 
In stony fetters || fixed and motionless. C. 814-810. 

When the caesura is in the same position in several suc- 
ceeding lines, the rhythm becomes monotonous. .Much of 
the vigor and harmony of Milton's verse, depends upon his 
skilful use of the caesura. 

MIXED METERS. 

In scansion, those syllables in the verse must be accented 
that are accented in the pronunciation of the word; and 
those words must be accented which require emphasis to 
3 



34 MILTON. 

express the thought correctly. A poet never twists his 
thought to fit his meter, but rather varies his meter to give 
additional emphasis to his thought. For this reason poetry 
can often express even a philosophical thought clearer and 
more emphatically than prose. 

In only a small percentage of his verses does Milton use 
the same foot throughout. The pyrrhic foot may be found 
in any part of the verse : as 

And in | reqiii | tal || ope | his leath | ern scrip. C. 626. 
Is of | such power || to stir | up joy | as this | . C. 677. 
Of Cor | herns || and black | est mid | night born | . L'A. 2. 
Are com | ing to | attend || their fa | ther's state | . C. 35. 
Unim'nd \ ful of | the crown || that vir | tue gives |. C. 9. 
Or taint | worm \\ to | the wean | ling herds | that graze. 

L. 46. 
And they || so per | feet is | their mis | ery | . C. 73. 
That flames | and danc I es \\ in | his crys | tal bounds | . 

C. 073. 
And lis | tens \\ to | the Her | aid of \ the sea | . L. 89. 
Would so | emblaze | the fore | head of | the deep | . 

C. 733. 
Held up I their pearl | ed wrists |] and took | her in. C. 834. 
And here || to ev | ery thirs | ty wan | derer. C. 524. 

It will be observed that all the above verses are iambic 
pentameter. The pyrrhic is used by Milton in other verses 
but not as commonly. But there are examples of it : 

Through the | sweet briar || or the | vine. L'A. 47 
Tinder | the haw j thorn \\ in | the dale. L'A. 68. 
Married || to im | mortal | verse. L'A. 137. 
Black || but | such as | in es | teem. 11 P. 17. 
Or lish | ered with j a show I er still. II P. 127. 
Softly || on my | eye-lids | laid. II P. 150. 
Three fair | branches | of your \ own. C. 969. 



INTRODUCTION. 35 

The trochee may be used ill iambic verse. This is very 
common in the first foot, and serves only to break the 
monotony of the lines : 

6ft on | a plat || of ris | ing ground [ . II P. 73. 

Nature's | full bless | ing || would | be well | dispensed | . 

C. 772. 
Fanning | their joy | ous leaves || to tfiy | soft lays | . 

L. 44. 

In the iambic tetrameter, the trochee seldom occurs in 
Milton, except for the first foot. In the iambic pentameter 
it is common in the 3rd and 4th feet, particularly when it 
occurs directly after the cresura : 

Begin | to throng || into | my mem | ory | . C. 206. 

Till fur | ther quest. || Shepherd [ I take | thy word | . 

C. 3-21. 
Tell her | of things || that no | gross ear | can hear | . 

C. 458. 
With luck | y words || favor | my des J tinecl urn | . L. 20. 
Let our | frail thoughts || dally | with false | surmise | . 

L. 153. 

The trochee is rare in the second foot, and is nearly always 
used for emphasis : 

Wind me || into | the ea | sy heart | ed man. C. 163. 
But that | two-hand | ed en | gine at | the door. L. 130. 
While the | still morn || went out [ with san | dais gray | . 
L. 187. 

The following lines, as well as a few others in Comus and 
Lycidas, gain in emphasis by considering the fifth foot as a 
trochee : 
May sit | i' the ceil ] ter || and | enjoy | bright day | . 

C. 382. 
But he | that hides | a dark | soul || and | foul thoughts |. 
C. 383. 



33 MILTON. 

The following are instances of tetrameter, in which the 
kind of foot varies. It will be observed that in some of the 
lines, the trochee prevails, and in others the iambic. 

Thy rapt | soul || sit | ting in | thine eyes | . II P. 40. 

And made | hell grant | what 16v r e | did seek | . II P. 108. 

Mirth || ad | mit me | of thy | crew. L'A. 38. 

Lap me || in soft | Lydian | airs. L'A. 136. 

In her | sweetest | saddest | plight. II P. 57. 

Hide me || from day's | garish | eye. II P. 141. 

With such | consort | as they | keep. II P. 145. 

tJp in | the broad | fields of | the sky. C 979. 

Two bliss | ful twins | are to | be born. C. 1011. 

The spondee may be used in place of the trochee or 
iambus : 

In fire | air, flood || or un | der ground. II P. 94. 

After j this mor | tal change || to her | true ser | vants. 

C. 10. 
Amongst | the en | throned gods || on saint | ed seats. 

C. 11. 

Sometimes there are more syllables in a line than the 
kind of verse would seem to require. This may be due to 
elision. If two vowel sounds come together in the same 
word or in different words, one is often elided. 

There in beds of violets blue. L'A. 21. 

Through the high wood echoing shrill. L'A. 56. 

To many a youth and many a maid. L'A. 95. 

The immortal mind that hath forsook. II P. 91. 

Of bright aerial spirits live insphered. C. 3. 

She, guiltless damsel, flymg the mad pursuit. C. 829. 

In certain words in which there are two vowels separated 
by w, the elision takes place as if there were no w present. 



INTRODUCTION. 37 

Towers and battlements it sees. L'A. 77. 

His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn. L'A. 108. 

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. L. 5. 

An unaccented final syllable in en, il, or ble, may be 
elided : 

In heaven yclept Euphros yne. L'A. 12. 
Through the heaven's wide pathless Avay. II P. 70. 
And bring all heaven before mine eyes. II P. 166. 
An earth's base built on stub^e. But come let's on. C. 599. 
To some of Saturn's crew, I must dissem&/e. C. 805. 
And here their tender age might suffer peril. C. 40. 

Of two unaccented vowels separated b} r the liquids 1, n, r, 
the first may be elided : 

Oft listening how the hounds and horn. L'A. 53. 

The clouds in thousand liveries dight. L'A. 62. 

The labouring clouds do often rest. L'A. 74. 

At last betakes him to this ominous word. C. Gl. 

And advice with scrupulous head. C. 108. 

And filled the air with barbarous dissonance. C. 550. 

To all that wander in that penlous flood. L. 185. 

There may be an extra unaccented syllable at the end of a 
line or before the caesura. This is especially common in 
the blank verses of Comus: 

To quench the drouth of Phcebws || ; which as they taste. 

C. 66. 
But, for that damned magician || let him be girt. C. 602. 
Root-bound that fled Apollo || . Fool, do net boast. C. 62. 
Is now the labour of my'thoughts, it is likeliest, C. 192. 
Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion. C. 155. 

Occasionally an ana pest or a dactyl may be substituted 



38 MILTON. 

for the trochee or iambus, thus giving an extra syllable to 
the verse : 

To seek in the valley some cool friendly spring. 
I must not suffer this ; yet 'tis but the lees. 

While English poetry depends on accent, the great poet 
does not neglect the quantity of syllables. In English, as in 
all other languages, a short syllable is one that has a short 
vowel, alone or followed by a single consonant, a doubled 
consonant, or two consonants, the first of which is a mute, 
the second a liquid. Ex., a, at, tripping. 

A syllable is long, when it contains a long vowel or 
diphthong ; or a short vowel followed by two different con- 
sonants, not a mute and liquid. Ex., No, sound, nothing. 

A succession of long syllables gives dignity to the line. 
A succession of short syllables gives a sprightly movement. 

Compare the quantity of the syllables in the first four 
lines with those in the last four. 

But hail, thou goddess sage and holy. II P. 11. 
Thee bright-haired Vesta long of yore. II P. 23. 
Sober, steadfast, and demure. II. P. 32. 
Flowing with majestic train. II P. 34. 
Come and trip it as ye go. L'A. 33. 
And love to live in dimple sleek. L'A. 30, 
Then to come in spite of sorrow. L'A. 45. 
To live with her, and live with thee. L'A. 39, 

Much of the different effect of the two poems, L'Allegro 
and II Penseroso, is due to the greater number of long- 
syllables in one than in the other. A careful study of all 
Milton's verse will show that the poet always considered the 
quantity of his syllables, as well as the accent. He himself 
says of versification : " True musical delight consists only in 
apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously 
drawn out from one verse into another." 



INTRODUCTION. 39 

Another principle of versification which distinguishes the 
lines of a great poet from those of a lesser one, is the adapta- 
tion of sound to sense. Vowels and liquids are spoken 
without any suppression of the breath, consequently they 
are more musical than mutes, which suppress the breath. 
Besides this, the vowels and consonants made in the front 
of the mouth bring different suggestions to the mind from 
those made in the back of the mouth or the throat. 

These two quotations from Paradise Lost illustrate this : 

" Heaven opened wide 
Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound, 
On golden hinges turning." 

The second describes the opening of the gates of Hell : 

" On a sudden open fly, 
With impetuous recoil and jarring sound, 
The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate 
Harsh thunder." 

The Minor Poems of Milton furnish many examples of 

this: 

'Mongst horrid shapes and shrieks and sights unholy. L'A. 4. 

Lap me in soft Lydian airs. L'A. 134. 

The melting voice through mazes running. L'A. 142. 

I woo, to hear thy even-song. II. P. 64. 

In sage and solemn tunes have sung. II. P. 117. 

And give resounding grace to all heaven's harmonies. C. 243. 

He and his monstrous root are heard to howl. C. 533. 

Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw. L. 124. 

The proper use of accent, the ctesural pause, quantity, and 
the adaptation of sound to sense, is part of a poet's training. 
The painter must study the use of color; the sculptor must 
know how to use his chisel ; the musician must have a 
thorough knowledge of the rules of harmony. The common 
diction that " poets are born, not made," is not absolutely 



40 MILTON. 

true. Every great poet has devoted days and nights in 
mastering the rudiments of his art. A study of the works 
of any author in chronological order, or a comparison of the 
first draft of a poem with the form in which it is given to 
the world, will prove the truth of this statement. 

I? Allegro and II Penseroso are lyrics. A lyric is a poem 
of strong emotion ; it derives its name from the lyre, to which 
it was formerly sung. But these poems also contain some 
of the most beautiful descriptions in the language. The 
greater part of these two poems is written in rhyming coup- 
lets, of seven or eight syllables each ; the trochaic tetram- 
eter with one unaccented syllable lacking, and the iambic 
tetrameter being used with no regularity, excepting to 
express the mood of the poet. 

The first ten verses of each poem are composed of alter- 
nate trimeters and pentameters many of which are irregular. 

Comus. — In this poem, Milton first made use of blank verse ; 
that is, the iambic pentameter without rhyme. The greater 
part of the dialogues is in this meter, with the exception of 
about seventeen lines that are written in heroic couplets ; that 
is, iambic pentameter rhyming in couplets. 

The speech of Comus to his followers in the first anti- 
masque, and the words of the Spirit and Sabrina from 867 to 
the end are lyrical and have the same meter as L'A . and 
II. P., with an occasional pentameter or trimeter introduced. 

The lines beginning "Sweet Echo" and " Sabrina fair," 
are written in trochaic lines of various length and with irreg- 
ular rhyme. 

Lycidas is written for the most part in iambic pentameter. 
Rhyme is made use of, but so ingeniously that no rule for it 
can be discovered. Ten lines are introduced in various 
parts of the poem without rhyme. 

" The poem is an exquisite example of a kind of verse 
which theorists might pronounce themost perfectand natural 
of any, that in which the mechanism is elastic, or determined 



INTRODUCTION. 41 

from moment to moment by the swell or shrinking of the 
meaning or feeling." — Masson. 

The List eight lines of Lycidas form a stanza known as 
the octava rima. It is in the iambic pentameter ; the 1st, 
3rd and 5th lines rhyme; the 2nd, 4th and 6th rhyme, and 
the 7th and 8th. This was a popular form of stanza among 
the Italian poets. 



SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 

The difficulty which pupils often find in reading an author 
like Milton is due largely to the fact that their previous 
reading has unfitted rather than fitted them for his style. 
Most of the books which they have read have been of such a 
nature that " he who runs may read." Milton's expression, 
however, is so condensed, that a word often brings up an 
entire picture, or a sentence may contain the gist of a 
long essay 

After a poem has been read aloud in the class, it must be 
studied word for word, so that the exact thought of the poet 
may be clear. Here the teacher must constantly act as 
interpreter, and he must also point out the beauties of imag- 
ination, thought or expression to the class. The pupils 
must also be led to discover these for themselves. A list 
of epithets may be made, and their position either before 
or after the nouns they modify may be studied. Theouoma- 
topoetic words and passages may be selected. In the de- 
scriptions of nature, the flowers, trees and birds named may 
be noted, and the pupil may be interested to change these 
to fit the landscape near his own home. 

In L'Allegro and II Penseroso the parallel passages should 
be selected. A list of the words expressive of color and 
sound is also a stimulating exercise and makes the pupil 
realize that the difference in the effect of the two poems can 
be analyzed. 

In the study of Comus, the pupil will find much enjoy- 
ment, if the teacher can lead him in imagination to Ludlow 
Castle, and place before him that gorgeous spectacle of 
Michaelmas Eve, 1634. A comparison of the plot and 
characters of Comus with any play of Shakespeare at once 

42 



SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. 43 

brings out the difference between the mask and the regular 
drama. A selection of the lyric passages, and a study of 
their meter will teach the pupils that different meters 
are adapted to different kinds of poetry. 

The pupils will be interested in studying the argument of 
Com us and its fallacy, and may be led to consider how far 
his theory of life has become the working principle of 
to-day. 

In Lycidas, a discussion of pastoral poetry and the hold 
pastoral scenes have always had upon the imagination, will 
prepare the pupil to appreciate the form of the poem. The 
different paragraphs should be observed and the transition 
from one to another. The meaning behind every metaphor 
should be discovered, audits absolute truth should be marked. 

Of course, the pupils should learn the main facts in the 
life of Milton. They should also study him as he has re- 
vealed himself in these poems : his pleasures, his ethics, and 
his attitude toward humanity. If possible, the pupils should 
acquire some knowledge of Milton's prose. An argument 
upon some such topic as, Resolved, that there should be a 
censorship of the press, would send the pupils to Milton's 
Areopagitica, and they would read it without its being an 
assigned task. 

In teaching any poem to high school pupils, the teacher 
should make a very sparing use of unfavorable criticism. 
The pupils are at an age when they applaud or condemn 
without discrimination. ■ If in their study of Milton, they 
have not learned to love the harmony of his numbers, the 
loftiness of his thought, and the uncompromising truth of 
his nature, they have not gotten all they should from the 
study of his poems. Young people love great qualities, and 
Milton is one of the giants of English literature. 



L' ALLEGRO. 1 

Hence, loathed Melancholy, 2 

Of Cerberus 3 and blackest Midnight born 
In Stygian 4 cave forlorn 5 

'Mongst horrid 6 shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy ! 
Find out some uncouth 6a cell, 

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, 7 
And the night-raven 8 sings ; 

There, under ebon shades and low-browed 9 rocks, 
As ragged as thy locks, 

In dark Cimmerian 10 desert ever dwell. 10 



1 L 1 Allegro and II Penseroso are both Italian words. They may be translated as 
" the cheerful man " and -t the contemplative man.'' The poems, however, do not 
represent two different men, but rather two moods of the same man ; the youth- 
ful Milton is the central figure of both. 

- Melancholy is derived from two Greek words meaning black bile; this, the 
ancients believed, was the cause of a depressed mental condition. 

3 The three-headed dog, who guarded the entrance to the Lower World. 

4 Stygian cave. The Styx was one of the rivers of the Lower World. The cave 
of Cerberus was on the farther shore of the Styx. 

5 Forlorn is used here in its strongest sense: utterly lost as applying to the lost 
spirits there. See iEneid, vi. 417-440. The prefix/or has an intensive meaning in 
the word. 

6 Horrid, besides its present meaning, suggests its Latin sense of rough or 
bristling indicating fear and dread. Gu Unknown. 

7 Explain the metaphor. 

8 Night-raven, a bird of ill-omen. 

9 beetling, overhanging. 

10 There in a lonely land, and gloomy cells* 
The dusky nation of Cimmeria dwells ; 
The sun ne'er views the uncomfortable seats. 
When radiant he advances, or retreats : 
Unhappy race ! whom endless night invades, 
Glouds the dull air, and wraps them round in shades. 
Odvssey, xi. 15-20. Pope's Trans, 

44 



I/ALLEGRO. 45 

But come, thou Goddess " fair and free, 

In liea ven yclept lL ' Euphrosyne, 13 

And by men heart-easing Mirth; 

Whom lovely Venus, at a birth, 

With two sister Graces more, 

To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore: 

Or whether (as some sager sing) u 

The frolic 15 wind that breathes the spring, 

Zephyr, with Aurora playing,' 6 

As he met her once a-Maying, 2u 

There, on beds of violets blue, 

And fresh-blown roses washed in dew, 

Filled her with thee, a daughter fair, 

So buxom, 17 blithe, and debonair. 

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee 

Jest and youthful Jollity, 

Quips 18 and cranks and wanton wiles, 

Nods and becks and wreathed smiles, 

Such as hang on Hebe's 19 cheek, 

And love to live in dimple sleek; SO 

Sport that wrinkled Care derides, 

And Laughter holding both his sides. 

Come, and trip it, as you go, 

11 The invocation is one of the classic features of the poem. Homer and Vergil 
invoked Calliope, the muse of epic poetry. "Fair and free." In the early ro- 
mances, these words are often used together, as an epithet for a lady. Free 
means of free or easy carriage. 

12 Yclept. Called. Y was occasionally prefixed to any part of the verb, without 
affecting its sense: cf. y-wis. 

13 Euphrosyne was one of the Graces. Her two sisters were Aglaia (brightness) 
and Thalia i bloom). 

14 sager. Milton probably refers to himself here. Sager, because in making 
Mirth the daughter of Zephyr and Aurora, the poet has given her an origin more 
in keeping with the "unreproved pleasures" in which she delights. 

, " frolic. What part of Bpeeeh ? What would be the more usual form ? 
: « Zephyr. The West Wind. Aurora. The Morning. 

17 buxom. Flexible, yielding, hence graceful. 

18 quips. A quick turn or taunt ; a sharp saying. Whip and quibble are from 
the same root. Crank. A humorous turn of speech. 

10 Hebe was the goddess of youth and cup-bearer to the gods. 



40 MILTON. 

On the light fantastic toe ; 

And in thy right hand lead with thee 

The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty; 20 

And, if I give thee honor due, 

Mirth, admit me of thy crew, 

To live with her, and live with thee, 

In nnreproved 21 pleasures free ; 40 

To hear the lark begin his flight, 

And, singing, startle the dull night, 

From his watch-tower in the skies, 22 

Till the dappled dawn doth rise ; 

Then to come, in spite of sorrow, 23 

And at my window bid good-morrow, 

Through the sweetbrier or the vine, 

Or the twisted eglantine; 24 

While the cock, with lively din, 

Scatters the rear of darkness thin ; 50 

And to the stack, or the barn-door, 

Stoutly struts his dames before : 

Oft listening how the hounds and horn 25 

Cheerly 26 rouse the slumbering morn, 

From the side of some hoar 2T hill, 

Through the high wood echoing shrill : 



20 Liberty. What place is given to Liberty among the companions of Mirth ? 

21 unreproved. Blameless. The scenery described in the following lines is that 
of Horton, the poet's home at the time these poems were written. 

- 2 watch-tower. The bird soars high into air, where, as from a watch-tower, he 
first sees the coming sun. Shelley, Hogg, and Wordsworth have written beautiful 
poems upon the lark. Shakespeare's lines in the 29th sonnet are unsurpassed. 
" Haply I think on thee, and then my state, 
Like to the lark at break of day arising 
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate." 

23 Various interpretations have been given to this line. It is probable, however, 
that L'Allegro comes to his window and makes his salutation to the morning. 

24 The eglantine is the sweetbrier, but it is not twisted. By twisted eglantine, 
the honeysuckle is probably meant. 

25 Perhaps the chase had started from Windsor Castle, which is near Horton. 

26 What is the modern form of this word ? 

27 hoar. Gray, either from the mist or frost. Which meaning is the better ? 



L'ALLEGRO. 47 

Sometime walking, not unseen, 28 

By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green, 

Right against the eastern gate 

Where the great San begins his state, 60 

Robed in flames and amber light, 

The clouds in thousand liveries dight; 29 

While the plowman, near at hand, 

Whistles o'er the farrowed land, 

And the milkmaid singeth blithe, 

And the mower whets his scythe, 

And every shepherd tells his tale 30 

Under the hawthorn in the dale. 

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, 31 

Whilst the landskip round it measures : 70 

Russet lawns, 32 and fallows gray, 

Where the nibbling flocks do stray ; 

Mountains on whose barren breast 33 

The laboring 31 clouds do often rest ; 

Meadows trim, with daisies pied ; 

*'-, allow brooks, and rivers wide; 

1 wers and battlements it sees 35 

Bosomed high in tufted trees, 

Where perhaps some beauty lies, 36 

The cynosure 37 of neighboring eyes. 80 

28 L'AUegro enjoys meeting people in his walk. 

29 dight. Adorned. The word is nearly obsolete. " And have a care you dighi 
things handsomely." Beaumont and Fletcher, Coxcomb, Act IV. 3. 

30 tells his tale ; counts the number of his sheep ; cf. tally. 

31 ( >bserve the abrupt transition. 

32 lawn. ,k Laund, or lawn, in a park, plain untilled ground." Kersey's Diet. e<l. 
1715. fallows. A piece of ploughed land, left unsown. So called, because of iis 
reddish color. 

33 Mountains. There are no mountains near Horton. 
84 Cumulus clouds filled with rain. 

35 Probably a reference to Windsor. 

36 lies. Dwells. 

37 cynosure. In Greek, this means the dog's tail, and was use:! of the stars of the 
Lester Bear, one of which was the pole star. Hence something that attracts 
universal attention. 



48 MILTON. 

Hard by a cottage chimney smokes 

From betwixt two aged oaks, 

Where Corydon and Thyrsis met ;i8 

Are at their savory dinner set 

Of herbs and other country messes, 

Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses ; 

And then in haste her bower 3<J she leaves. 

With Thestylis 40 to bind the sheaves; 

Or, if the earlier season lead, 

To the tanned haycock in the mead. 90 

Sometimes, with secure 41 delight, 

The upland hamlets will invite, 

When the merry bells ring round, 

And the jocund rebecks 42 sound 

To many a youth and many a maid 

Dancing in the checkered shade, 

And young and old come forth to play 

On a sunshine holiday, 

Till the livelong daylight fail : 

Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, 43 100 

With stories told of many a feat, 

How Fairy Mab 44 the junkets eat. 

88 Corydon and Thyrsis. Theocritus, the Greek poet, and Vergil, the Roman 
poet, often used these names for their shepherds. 

39 bower, A dwelling-place. 

40 Phyllis and Thestylis. Names used by the Greek and Roman poets for 
shepherdesses. 

41 secure. Free from care. 

42 A two-stringed instrument played with a bow ; something like a fiddle. 

43 In the evening, all the country-folk gather in some cottage to tell stories. 
The elliptical style of these lines suggests the confused voices of the peasants, 
each one anxious to tell his own story. Observe Milton's attitude toward these 
rustics. 

44 An ever-present fairy in the minds of the rustics at that time. 

" This is Mab, the mistress fairy, 

That doth nightly rob the dairy. 

She that pinches country wenches, 

If they rub not clear their benches." 
Johnson's Entertainment at Altorpe, 1603. See also Mercutio's account of Fairy 
Mab, Rom. and Jul. I. 4. 



L'ALLSGRO. 49 

She was pinched and pulled, she said ; 45 

And he, by Friar's lantern led, 46 

Tells how the drudging goblin sweat 47 

To earn his cream-bowl duly set, 

When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, 

His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn 

That ten day-laborers could not end ; 

Then lies him down, the lubber fiend,*" 110 

And, stretched out all the chimney's length, 

Basks at the fire his hairy strength, 

And crop-full out of doors he flings, 

Ere the first cock his matin rings. 

Thus done the tales, to bed they creep, 

By whispering winds soon lulled asleep. 

Towered cities please us then, 49 

And the busy hum of men, 

Where throngs of knights and barons bold, 

In w^eeds of peace, high triumphs hold, 50 120 

With store of ladies, whose bright eyes 

Rain influence, and judge the prize 

Of wit or arms, while both contend 

To win her grace whom all commend. 

There let Hymen 51 oft appear 

45 She. One of the peasant maidens who is telling the story. She had evidently 
come under Mab's displeasure. 

46 lie. One of the men of the hamlet now tells his story of the strange tilings 
that had happened to him. Friar's lantern. Jack-o' ^he-Lantern, who leads 
people in the night into marshes and ditches. 

47 drudging goblin. Also called Robin Goodfellow. If any farmer placed a bowl 
of cream for him, he would thresh his corn during the night, with an invisible 
flail. 

48 lubber fiend. Same as "drudging goblin." Lubber means a blockhead, a 
clumsy fellow. 

49 It is a debatable question whether at this point L'Allegro remains at home 
ami reads, or whether he goes to the city aud sees the things described in line 117 
et seq. 

60 Weeds, clothing. Triumph, a tournament, a stately procession. 

41 Hymen. The god of marriage. In Jonson's Hymenaei, there is this stages- 
direction : " On the other hand entered Hymen, the god of marriage, in a saffron- 
colored robe, his undervestures white, his socks yellow, a yellow veil of silk on 
4 



50 MILTON. 

In saffron robe, with taper clear, 

And pomp, and feast, and revelry. 

With mask and antique pageantry ; 52 

Such sights as youthful poets dream 

On summer eves by haunted stream. 130 

Then to the well- trod stage anon, 

If Jonson's learned sock 53 be on, 

Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, 54 

Warble his native wood-notes wild. 

And ever, against eating cares, 

Lap me in soft Lydian 55 airs, 

Married to immortal verse, 

Such as the meeting 56 soul may pierce, 

In notes with many a winding boat 

Of linked sweetness long drawn out 140 

With wanton heed and giddy cunning, 

The melting voice through mazes running, 

Untwisting all the chains that tie 

The hidden soul of harmony ; 

That Orpheus' 57 self may heave his head 

his left arm, his head crowned with roses and marjoram, in his right hand a 
torch.'' 

52 pageantry. The pageant was originally a movable platform upon which 
pkiys were given Later it meant the play itself. 

53 sock. A low-heeled shoe (Lat. soccus) worn by actors in comedy ; hence used 
for comedy. 

B * Many critics have thought that Milton failed to comprehend the magnitude of 
Shakespeare's genius. Edward Philips, a nephew of Milton, published a book, 
Theatrum Poetarum, in 1675. In it, he says of Shakespeare : " Where the polish- 
ments of art are most wanting, as probably his learning was not extraordinary, he 
pleases with a certain wild and native elegance." 

63 The Lydian music was softer and sweeter than the Dorian or the Phrygian. 
the two other kinds of ancient music. 

50 The soul goes out to meet the music. 

R7 Orpheus was the son of Apollo and Calliope. He played so beautifully upon 
his lyre, that not only wild beasts, but rocks and trees followed him. He was 
married to Eurydice, who died a short time after their marriage. Orpheus went 
to the Stygian realm in search of her, and sang such sad strains that even the 
furies shed tears. Pluto permitted him to take his wife away with him, on condi- 
tion that he should not turn to look at her, until they had reached the upper air 
On the verge of light, however, a sudden madness seized him and he looked back. 
At once Eurydice was snatched back inte the realms of Pluto. 



L'ALLEGRO. 51 

From golden slumber on a bed 

Of heaped Elysian 58 flowers, and hear 

Such strains as would have won the ear 

Of Pluto to have quite set free 

His half- regained Eurydice, 150 

These delights if thou canst give, 

Mirth, with thee I mean to live. 

58 Elysian. Tli^ souls of the blessed dwelt in tlie Elysian Eields. Here was 
eternal spring ; the most beautiful flowers grew in abundance, and birds sang their 
sweetest songs. 



IL PENSEROSO. 

Hence, vain deluding Joys, 

The brood of Folly without father bred ! 
How little you bested, 1 

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys! 
Dwell- in some idle brain, 

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, 1 
As thick and numberless 

As the gay motes that people the sunbeams, 
Or likest hovering dreams, 

The fickle pensioners 2 of Morpheus' train. 10 

But, hail ! thou Goddess sage and holy ! 
Hail, di vines t Melancholy ! 3 
Whose saintly visage is too bright 
To hit the sense of human sight, 
And therefore to our weaker view 
O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue ; 
Black, but such as in esteem 
Prince Memnon's sister 4 might beseem, 
Or that starred Ethiope queen 5 that strove 

1 Avail. 

2 pensioners. Attendants. Queen Elizabeth established a band of military 
courtiers by that name. They were young men of the best families, and sett lie 
fashion in dress and diversions. After this the name became common. Morpheus. 
The god of sleep. 

3 Melancholy means in this poem "Thoughtf illness." 

4 Memnon was a prince of the Ethiopians, renowned for his beauty, who came 
to help Priam. He was slain by Achilles. No mention is made by the ancients of 
the looks of his sister, but Milton assumes that she would be equally beautiful. 

6 Cassiope, wife of Cepheus, King of the Ethiopians, boasted that she was more 

52 



IL PENSEROSO. 53 

To set her beauty's praise above 20 

The Sea Nymphs, and their powers offended. 
Yet thou art higher far descended : 
Thee bright-haired Vesta G lung of yore 
To solitary Saturn bore; 
His daughter she; in Saturn's reign 
Such mixture was nob held a stain. 
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades 
lie met her, and in secret shades 
Of woody Ida's 7 inmost grove, 

Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove. SO 

vCome, pensive Nun, devout and pure, 
Sober, steadfast, and demure, 
All in a robe of darkest grain, 
Flowing with majestic train, 
And sable stole of cypress lawn 8 
Over thy decent" shoulders drawn. 
Come; but keep thy wonted state, 
With even step, and musing gait, 
And looks commercing 10 with the skies, 



beautiful than the sea-nymphs. In revenge, her daughter, Andromeda was chained 
to a rock in the sea, to be devoured by a sea-monster, but she was rescued by 
Perseus. Cassiope was afterwards placed among the stars, as the constellation, 
Cassiopeia, 

6 The daughter of Saturn and goddess of the hearth. She was always repre- 
sented as pure and undefiled, the guardian of the home and of the state. Saturn 
reigned before he was overthrown by his son Zeus. According to astrologists, if 
the planet Saturn rules a person's life, he will be melancholy, and fond of solitude. 
Milton's reason forgiving this parentage to Melancholy is no: quite clear. Warton 
considers that Vesta typifies genius, and that Melancholy is hence the daughter of 
genius and solitude. 

7 Mt. Ida in Crete. 

" Titan, heaven's first-born, 
With his enormous brood and birthright seized 
By younger Saturn ; he from mightier Jove, 
His own and Rhea's son, like measure found. 
So Jove usurping reigned. These first in Crete 
Ami I la known, thence on the snowy top 
Of colli Olympus ruled the middle air, 
Their highest heaven."— P. L.I. 510-517. 

8 Black crape. - .Modest. 10 Communing. 



54 MILTON. 

Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes : 40 

There, held in holy passion still, 

Forget thyself to marble, 11 till 

With a sad leaden downward cast 

Thou fix them on the earth as fast. 

And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet, 

Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet, 

And hears the Muses 12 in a ring 

Aye round about Jove's altar sing ; 

And add to these retired Leisure, 

That in trim gardens takes his pleasure ; 50 

But, first and chief est, with thee bring 

Him that you soars on golden wing, 

Guiding the fiery- wheeled throne, 

The Cherub Contemplation ; 13 

And the mute Silence hist u along, 

11 Milton in his lines on Shakespeare, says: 

" Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, 
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving, 
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie 
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die." 

12 Daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne (Memory). They were nine in number ; 
each one presided over some department of art or science. They were : Calliope, 
Muse of epic poetry ; Clio, Muse of history; Erato, Muse of love ditties ; Euterpe, 
Muse of lyric poetry ; Melpomene, Muse of tragedy ; Polyhymnia, Muse of sacred 
poetry ; Terpsichore, Muse of choral song and dance ; Thalia, Muse of comedy ; 
and Urania, Muse of astronomy. 

13 Forth rushed with whirlwind sound, 

The chariot of Paternal Deity, 

Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel undrawn, 

Itself instinct with spirit, but convoyed 

By four cherubic shapes. Four faces each 

Had wondrous ; as with stars, their bodies all 

And wings, were set with eyes ; with eyes the wheels 

Of beryl, and careering fires between ; 

Over their heads a crystal firmament, 

Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure 

Amber, and colors of the showery arch.— P. L. VI. 749-759. 
Milton names one of these cherubim, Contemplation. The cherubim ranked second 
to the seraphim among the angels, and excelled in knowledge. Contemplation is 
pronounced with five syllables. 

14 This word may be taken as an interjection, an imperative, or a past participle. 
If it is taken as a past participle, it means hushed, and the thought of the line is, 
" bring along with thee, the mute, hushed 81161106." (Skeat's interpretation.) 






IL PENSEROSO. 55 

'Less Philomel 15 will deign a song, 

In her sweetest saddest plight. 

Smoothing th© rugged brow of Night, 

While Cynthia 16 checks her dragon yoke 17 

Gently o'er the accustomed oak. 18 60 

Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, 

Most musical, most melancholy ! 

Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among 

I woo, to hear thy evensong ; 

And, missing thee, I walk unseen 19 

On the dry smooth-shaven green, 

To behold the wandering moon, 

Riding near her highest noon, 

Like one that had been led astray 

Through the heaven's wide pathless way, 70 

And oft, as if her head she bowed, 

Stooping through a fleecy cloud. 

Oft, on a plat of rising ground, 

I hear the far-off curfew 20 sound, 

Over some wide- watered shore, 21 

16 The nightingale. Procne and Philomela were two sisters, the former of whom 
was married to Terens, king of Thrace. He became tired of her, plucked out her 
tongue by the roots, and announcing that she was dead, married Philomela. 
When Philomela learned the truth, the sisters in revenge killed the son of Tereus 
and served him up as food for his father. For this crime, Procne was changed 
into a swallow ; Philomela, into a nightingale ; and Tereus, into a hawk. The 
song of the nightingale is always sad, since she is always bemoaning her crime. 
'* Hark ! ah, the nightingale — 
The tawny-throated ! 

Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst 1 
What triumph ! hark ! what pain ! " 

—Matthew Arnold's Philomela. 

16 Another name for Diana, the moon-goddess. She was so called, because she 
was born on Mt. Cynthus, in the island of Delos. 

17 In ancient mythology, only the chariot of Ceres is drawn by dragons. 

18 Perhaps some particular oak over which the poet had watched the moon rise. 

19 Cf. L 1 Allegro, note 28. 

20 A bell rung at eight or nine o'clock in the evening, originally as a signal that 
all fires should be covered. 

21 This, like the reference to the mountains in L' Allegro, would seem to show 
that the poet was describing an imaginary landscape. 



50 MILTON. 

Swinging slow with sullen roar ; 

Or, if the air will not permit, 

Some still removed place will fit, 

Where glowing embers through the room 

Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, 80 

Far from all resort of mirth, 

Save the cricket on the hearth, 22 

Or the bellman's 23 drowsy charm 

To bless the doors from nightly harm. 

Or let my lamp, at midnight hour, 

Be seen in some high lonely tower, 

Where I may oft out watch the Bear, 24 

With thrice-great Hermes, 25 or unsphere 

The spirit of Plato, 26 to unfold 

What worlds or what vast regions hold 90 

The immortal mind that hath forsook 

Her mansion in this fleshly nook ; 

And of those demons that are found 

In fire, air, flood, or underground, 27 



22 Pronounce to rhyme with mirth. 

23 The watchman, who cried the hours and the state of the weather, and often 
pronounced charms at the door to keep away goblins and fairies, 

•' From noise of scare-fires rest ye free, 
From murders, benedicitie ! 
From all mischance that may affright 
Your pleasing slumbers in the night, 
Mercie secure ye all, and keep 
The goblin from ye, while ye sleep." 

Herrick's Hesperides. 
In Much Ado About Nothing, Act III, see. Ill, Shakespeare gives a very funny 
description of the duties of the watchman, and the way they were fulfilled. 

24 In this latitude, the constellation of the Bear is always above the horizon ; 
this implies that the poet sits up until the sunrise causes the stars to vanish. 

25 The Egyptian philosopher Tliot was called by the Greeks Hermes Trisme- 
gistus, which means the Thrice-great-Mercury. 

'•* By a careful study of his works the poet may discover where the soul abides 
after death, and learn about the daemons who preside over planets and elements. 
Milton expresses this thought in a metaphor, as if he would call back the spirit of 
Plato from the dead. Plato was a Greek philosopher, who lived 420-347 b. c. 

27 The medieval philosophers taught that there were four elements, fire, air, 
water and earth, each presided over by a spirit or daemon.. 



IL PENSEROSO. 57 

Whose power hath a true consent 28 

With planet or with element. 

Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy 

In sceptered pall 29 come sweeping by, 

Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line, 

Or the tale of Troy divine,? 100 

Or what (though rare) of later age 

Ennobled hath the buskined 31 stage. 

But, O sad Virgin ! that thy power 

Might raise Musseus ,2 from his bower ; 

Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing 

Such notes as, warbled to the string, 

Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, 

And made Hell grant what love did seek; 

Or call up him :5:i that left half told 

The story of Cambuscan bold, 110 

Of Camball, and of Algarsife, 

And who had Canace to wife, 

That owned the virtuous 34 ring and glass, 

And of the wondrous horse of brass 

2S ( lonsent — agreement. 

29 Probably a robe and scepter. Tragedy, telling of kings and queens. 
J0 The greatest Greek tragedies told the story of CGdipus, King of Thebes ; 
Agamemnon, a descendant of Pelops ; and the Trojan War. 
31 The actors in tragedy wore the buskin. 

82 A mythical poet of Thrace. 

83 Chaucer, who left unfinished the Squire's Tale of Cambuskan. 

At Sarray, in the land of Tartarye, 
Ther dwelte a king, that werreyed Russye, 
Thurgh which ther deyde main- a doughty man. 
This noble king was cleped Cambinskan. 

This noble king, this Tartre Cambinskan, 

Hadde two so'nes on Elpheta his wyf, 

Of whiche th'eldeste highte Algarsyf, 

That other sone was cleped Cambalo. 

A doghter hadde this worthy king also, 

That yongest was. and highte Canacee. 
A knight came to the court of Cambuskan, and presented him with a steed of 
brass, which could in twenty-four hours, carry his rider wherever lie wished to go. 
lie also gave to Canace a ring, which enable;! her to understand the language of 
the bir.ls. and a mirror, in which one could distinguish friend from foe. 
34 Virtuous— powerful. 



58 MILTON. 

On which the Tartar king did ride ; 

And if aught else great bards 35 beside 

In sage and solemn tunes have sung, 

Of turneys, and of trophies hung, 

Of forests, and enchantments drear, 

Where more is meant than meets the ear. 120 

Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career, 

Till civil-suited 36 Morn appear, 

Not tricked and frounced, as she was wont 

With the Attic boy 37 to hunt, 

But kerchieft 38 in a comely cloud, 

While rocking winds are piping loud, 

Or ushered with a shower still, 

When the gust hath blown his fill, 

Ending on the rustling leaves, 

With minute-drops from off the eaves. 130 

And, when the sun begins to fling 

His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring 

To arched walks of twilight groves, 

And shadows brown, that Sylvan 39 loves, 

Of pine, or monumental 40 oak, 

Where the rude ax with heaved stroke 

Was never heard the nymphs to daunt, 

Or fright them from their hallowed haunt. 

There, in close covert, by some brook, 

Where no profaner eye may look, 140 

Hide me from day's garish eye, 

While the bee with honeyed thigh, 

That at her flowery work doth sing, 

And the waters murmuring, 

35 Spenser, the author of the Faerie Queene ; Tasso, the author of Jerusalem 
Delivered ; Ariosto, the author of Orlando Furioso. 

86 In plain civilian dress. 

87 Cephalus, with whom Aurora was in love. 

38 From the O. F. cuovrechef, a covering for the head. We have lost sight of the 
original meaning in our word handkerchief. 
se From Sylvanus, god of the forest. 40 monumental— old 



IL PENSEROSO. 59 

With such consort " as they keep, 

Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep. 

And let some strange mysterious dream 

Wave at his wings, in airy stream 

Of lively portraiture displayed, 

Softly on my eyelids laid ; 150 

And, as I wake, sweet music breathe 

Above, about, or underneath, 

Sent by some Spirit to mortals good, 

Or the unseen Genius of the wood. 

But let my due feet never fail 

To walk the studious cloister's pale, 42 

And love the high embowed roof, 

With antique pillars massy proof," 

And storied u windows richly clight, 

Casting a dim religious light. 160 

There let the pealing organ blow, 

To the full- voiced quire below, 

In service high and anthems clear, 

As may with sweetness, through mine ear, 

Dissolve me into ecstasies, 

And bring all heaven before mine eyes. 

And may at last my weary age 

Find out the peaceful hermitage, 

The hairy gown and mossy cell, 

Where I may sit and rightly spell 45 170 

Of every star that heaven doth shew, 

And every herb that sips the dew, 

Till old experience do attain 

To something like prophetic strain. 

These pleasures, Melancholy, give ; 

And I with thee will choose to live. 

41 Perhaps concert or harmony. 42 pale— an enclosure. 

43 The meaning is doubtful. Most interpreters agree with Masson that it moans 
massive enough to support the roof. 
* 4 Stained glass, illustrating stories from the Bible perhaps. 
46 In its original sense, it meant to say or tell the letters ; hence read slowly, 



COMITS : A MASQUE. 

INTRODUCTION. 

It was the custom of kings and nobles to celebrate weddings, 
birthdays and other important events by entertainments consisting 
largely of music and dancing, in the great halls of their castles. 
Kings and queens took part in the singing and the stately minuet, 
often disguised as gods or goddesses, or dressed to personate some 
abstract qualit} r . From these masquerades, the transition to the 
masque was easily made. 

The masque had its origin in Italy. It was introduced into England 
during the early part of the sixteenth century, and attained its 
greatest popularity during the reigns of James I. and his successor 
Charles I. Under their patronage, the rules of its composition were 
perfected and definitely established. 

The masque differed widely from the regular drama. The plot, 
which was always simple, was suggested by the occasion for which 
it was given. If it were in honor of a wedding, the god of marriage 
appeared on the stage, and conjugal love was the theme. Lines 
complimentary to the personages in whose honor it was written, 
were introduced. The great charm of the masque was due to the 
music, dancing, costume, and scenery. No expense was spared. 
One masque, given in 1034, cost over £'20,000 ; the average masque 
cost over £5,000. The most talented men of the age vied with one 
another in winning the approval of the royal patrons of the masque. 
Ben Jonson, the great dramatist, for thirty years employed his pen 
in its service. Inigo Jones, the famous architect, designed elaborate 
machinery, by which clouds descended and fairies appeared in mid- 
air, and painted beautiful scenery for it ; while the best musicians 
and dancing-masters wrote the music, or trained the actors in their 
parts. The peasants, too, had their share in the masque. In order 
to create a diversion, and give the main characters an opportunity 
to rest, the anti-masque was introduced. This generally consisted 
of a dance of the rabble, in which the servants of the castle, the 
tenants, or hired actors from the theatre took part. Sometimes a. 

60 



COMUS: A MASQUE. 01 

dialogue was introduced, in which comments were made upon the 
main story; the anti-masque was always mirthful, and often gro- 
tesque. 

Comus follows tlie general rules of the masque ; but the scenery 
is less elaborate, there is less music, and the speeches are longer 
than in the masques of Jonson. Although Milton pays the usual 
compliments to the Bridgewater family for whom it was written, the 
theme of his story, the all-prevailing power of chastity, interested 
him more than the occasion for which it was presented. 

The Earl of Bridge water had been appointed President of the 
Council of Wales, and Lord Lieutenant of North and South Wales, 
and the four English counties forming the Welsh Marches. His 
residence was Ludlow Castle, a magnificent edifice built in the 12th 
century, but now in ruins. The Mask of Comus was written in 
honor of his inauguration, possibly at the request of Henry Lawes, 
who was music tutor to the children of the Earl. Lawes composed 
the music for the Mask and took the part of the Attendant Spirit 
The Mask was given in the hall of the castle, since known as Comus 
Hall, on Michaelmas Eve, 1034. 

Milton did not give the name of Comus to this play. In the three 
editions printed during his lifetime, it is called simply. A Mask. 

There is a story that the daughter and two sons of the Earl of 
Bridgewater were lost- in a forest near Ludlow, and that this incident 
furnished Milton with his plot. There is no way to verify this story; 
perhaps it is of little consequence to the lover of poetry whether this 
magnificent poem was suggested by such a slight incident, or had 
its source in the poet's imagination. It is evident, however, that 
Milton's reading had a great influence upon his fancy. There are 
echoes of Shakespeare's Tempest, in Comus, which the student may 
find pleasure in tracing for himself. 

As the play was given in Ludlow Castle, it differed slightly from 
the poem. Henry Lawes, in the character of the Spirit, entered or 
descended, singing twenty lines of the song here given in the 
epilogue, beginning. "To the ocean now I fly," but changed to the 
more appropriate verse, " From the heavens now I fly." 



62 MILTON. 



THE PERSONS. 



The Attendant Spirit, after- 
wards in the habit of Thyrsis. 
Comus, ivith his Crew. 
The Lady. 



First Brother. 
Second Brother, 
Sabrina, the Nymph. 



The first Scene discovers a Wild Wood. 

The Attendant Spirit descends or enters. 

Before the starry threshold of Jove's court 1 

My mansion * is, where those immortal shapes 

Of bright aerial spirits live insphered 

In regions mild of calm and serene air, 

Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot 

Which men call Earth, and, with low-thoughted care, 

Confined and pestered 2 in this pinfold 3 here, 

Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being, 

Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives, 

After this mortal change, to her true servants 10 

Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats. 

Yet some there be that by due steps aspire 

To lay their just hands on that golden key 4 

That opes the palace of eternity. 

To such my errand is ; and, but for such, 

I would not soil these pure ambrosial 5 weeds 

With the rank vapors of this sin- worn mold. 

1 Mansion— dwelling place. 

2 Pestered — cumbered, cramped. 

3 A sheep-fold or pound. 

4 And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.— Matt. xvi. 19. 

5 The first meaning of this word is immortal; hence heavenly. Here the word 
carries with it a little of the aroma of its later meaning, ambrosia, or the food of 
the gods. 



COMtTS : A MASQUE 03 

But to my task Neptune besides the sway 
Of every salt flood and each ebbing stream, 
Took in by lot, 'twixt high and nether Jove, 6 20 

Imperial rule of all the sea-girt isles 7 
That, like to rich and various gems, inlay 
The unadorned 8 bosom of the deep ; 
Which he, to grace his tributary gods, 
By course commits to several 9 government, 
And gives them leave to wear their sapphire crowns, 
And wield their little tridents. But this Isle, 10 
The greatest and the best of all the main, 
He quarters to his blue-haired " deities ; 
And all this tract 12 that fronts the falling sun 80 

A noble Peer 13 of mickle u trust and power 
Has in his charge, with tempered awe to guide 
An old and haughty nation, 15 proud in arms : 
Where his fair offspring, nursed in princely lore, 
Are coming to attend their father's state, 
And new-intrusted scepter. But their way 
Lies through the perplexed paths of this drear wood, 
The nodding horror of whose shady brows 
Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger ; 
And here their tender age might suffer peril, 40 



fc Took in by lot, 'twixt high and nether Jove. 

Thee brothers deities from Saturn came, 

And ancient Rhea, Earth's immortal dame ; 

Assign'd by lot, our triple rule we know ; 

Infernal Pluto sways the shades below ; 

O'er the wide clouds, and o'er the starry plain, 

Ethereal Jove extends his high domain. 

My court beneath the hoary waves I keep 

And hush the roaring of the sacred deep. 

Neptune's Speech, II. XV. 210-217. (Pope's Trans.). 
7 Here the tautology adds to the vividness of the picture. Cf. the line from the 
twenty-third Psalm: "Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." 
5 Unadorned before the islands were placed there. 

9 Separate. w Great Britain. » Pertaining to the sea. 

11 Wales. is Earl of Bridgewater. " An old form of much. 

16 Which was the older, the English or the Welsh nation ? 



64 MILTON. 

But that, by quick command from sovran Jove, 
I was dispatched for their defense and guard : 
And listen why ; for I will tell you now I6 
What never yet was heard in tale or song, 
From old or modern bard, in hall or bower. 

Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape 
Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine, 
After the Tuscan mariners 17 transformed, 
Coasting the Tyrrhene 18 shore, as the winds listed, 
On Circe's island 19 fell. (Who knows not Circe, 50 

The daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup 
Whoever tasted lost his upright shape, 20 
And downward fell into a groveling swine ? ) 
This Nymph, that gazed upon his clustering locks, 
With ivy berries wreathed, and his blithe youth, 
Had by him, ere he parted thence, a son 
Much like his father, but his mother more, 
Whom therefore she brought up, and Comus 21 named : 
Who, ripe and frolic 22 of his full-grown age, 
Roving the Celtic and Iberian fields, 23 GO 

At last betakes him to this ominous wood, 
And, in thick shelter of black shades embowered, 
Excels his mother at her mighty art; 



,c The story of Comus, which follows, is Milton's own invention. Comus occa- 
sionally appeared in literature before Milton invented his history, as the god of 
Good Cheer. 

17 " He (Bacchus) hired a ship which belonged to Tyrrhenian pirates ; but the 
men, instead of landing at Naxos, steered towards Asia, to sell him there as a 
slave. Thereupon the god changed the masts and oars into serpents, and himself 
into a lion ; ivy grew round the vessel, and the sound of flutes was heard on every 
side. The sailors were seized with madness, leaped into the sea, and were meta- 
morphosed into dolphins."— Smith's Classical Diet. 

18 The Tyrrhene Sea is between Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia. 

19 ^Eaea, off the coast of Latium. This story that Bacchus visited the island of 
Circe, is Milton's own invention. 

20 See Ody. B. 10 for the story of Circe ; also note 2». 

21 See note 16. 

22 See L' Al. note 15. 

83 Celtic and Iberian ; France and Spain. 



COM US : A MASQUE. 65 

Offering to every weary traveler 

His orient 24 liquor in a crystal glass, 

To quench the drouth of Phoebus; which as they taste 

(For most do taste through fond intemperate thirst), 

Soon as the potion works, their human count'nance, 

The express resemblance of "the gods, is changed 

Into some brutish form of wolf or bear, 70 

Or ounce or tiger, hog, or bearded goat, 

All other parts remaining as they were. 25 

And they, so perfect is their misery, 

Not once perceive their foul disfigurement, 

But boast themselves more comely than before, 

And all their friends and native home forget, 

To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty. 

Therefore, when any favored of high Jove 

Chances to pass through this adventurous 26 glade, 

Swift as the sparkle of a glancing star 80 

I shoot from heaven, to give him safe convoy, 

As now I do. But first I must put off 

These my sky robes, spun out of Iris' -' woof, 

And take the weeds and likeness of a swain 28 

That to the service of this house belongs ; 

Who, with his soft pipe and smooth-dittied song, 

Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar, 

And hush the waving woods ; nor of less faith, 

24 Brilliant refering to the color. 

Ten thousand banners rise into the air 
With orient colors waving.— P. L. I. 545-546. 
26 The metamorphosis caused by Circe differed from that described here: 
" Instant her circling wand the goddess waves, 
To hogs transforms them, and the sty receives. 
No more was seen the human form divine ; 
Head, face and members bristle into swine : 
Still curs'd with sense, their minds remain alone, 
Aim their own voice affrights them when they groan. 1 ' 

Pope's Trans. Odys. X. 876-281 
*« Full of dangers. 

37 Robes dyed in the tints of the rainbow. 
28 This passage is a compliment to Henry Lawes. 



$6 MILTON. 

And in this office of his mountain watch 

Likeliest, and nearest to the present aid 90 

Of this occasion. But I hear the tread 

Of hateful steps ; I must be viewless now. 

Comus 29 enters, ivith a charming-rod in one hand, his glass in the 
other ; with him a rout of monsters, headed like sundry sorts of 
wild beasts, but otherwise like men and women, their apparel 
glistering. They come in making a riotous and unruly noise, 
with torches in their hands. 

Comus. The star 30 that bids the shepherd fold 
Now the top of heaven doth hold ; 
And the gilded car of day 
His glowing axle doth allay 31 
In the steep Atlantic stream ; 
And the slope sun his upward beam 
Shoots against the dusky pole, 

Pacing towards the other goal 100 

Of his chamber 32 in the east. 
Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast, 33 
Midnight shout and revelry, 
Tipsy dance and jollity. 
Braid your locks with rosy twine, 
Dropping odors, dropping wine. 
Rigor now is gone to bed ; 
And Advice with scrupulous head, 
Strict Age, and sour Severity, 

29 This passage is an anti-masque. 

It is not known who took the part of Comus. 

30 The same thought has been most beautifully expressed by Sappho. Only this 
fragment of her poem has come down to us : 

" Hesperus, thou bringest all the light-bringing morning has scattered ; thou 
bringest the sheep, then bringest the goat, then bringest the child to the 
mother.*" 

31 The Ancients believed that the sun made a hissing sound when it sank into the 
Atlantic. 

32 Cf. Psalm xix. 4-5. The sun as a bridegroom cometh out of his chamber, and 
rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. 

33 Cf. these lines with lines 55-28 of L'Allegro. 



COM US: A MASQUE. G7 

With their grave saws, 34 in slumber lie. 110 

We, that are of purer tire, 35 

Imitate the starry quire, 36 

Who, in their nightly watchful spheres, 

Lead in swift round the months and years. 

The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, 

Now to the moon in wavering morrice 37 move ; 

And on the tawny sands and shelves 

Trip the pert fairies and the clapper elves. 

By dimpled brook and fountain brim, 

The wood nymphs, decked with daisies trim, 120 

Their merry wakes 38 and pastimes keep : 

What hath night to do with sleep ? 

Night hath better sweets to prove ; 

Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. 

Come, let us our rites begin ; 

'Tis only daylight that makes sin, 

Which these dun shades will ne'er report. — 

Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport, 

Dark-veiled Cotytto, 39 to whom the secret flame 

Of midnight torches burns ! mysterious dame, 130 

That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb 

Of Stygian darkness spets +0 her thickest gloom, 

And makes one blot of all the air ! 

Stay thy cloudy ebon chair, 

S4 Laws. Maxims. 

" I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, 
All saws of Books. "—Hamlet. 1.5. 104-105. 

36 It was an old belief that the four elements were water, earth, fire and air, 
from which everything was made ; the gods were made of fire. 

30 The same as choir. This word was spelt quire, until the close of the XVII 
century. 

37 A dance brought from Spain into England in the reign of Edward III. 

38 Wakes were the watches before the church holidays. They were celebrated 
by dancing. We have preserved the wake or watch on New Year's Eve ; later the 
word was used as here for festivities. 

39 Cotys is another form of the same word. A Thracian goddess. Her festival 
was celebrated at night, with immoral rites. 

*° Spits. 



68 MILTON. 

Wherein thou ridest with Ilecat', 41 and befriend 

Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end 

Of all thy dues be done, and none left out; 

Ere the blabbing 42 eastern scout, 

The nice 4:3 Morn on the Indian steep, 

From her cabined loophole peep, 140 

And to the telltale Sun descry 44 

Our concealed solemnity. 

Come, knit hands, and beat the ground 

In a light fantastic round. 43 [ The Measure. 

Break off, break oft' ! I feel the different pace 
Of some chaste footing near about this ground. 
Run to your shrouds 4,; within these brakes and trees; 
Our number may affright. Some virgin sure 
(For so I can distinguish by mine art) 
Benighted in these woods ! Now to my charms, 150 

And to my wily trains : I shall ere long 
Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed 
About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl 
My dazzling spells into the spongy 4; air, 
Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion, 
And give it false presentments, lest the place 
And my quaint habits breed astonishment, 
And put the damsel to suspicious flight ; 
Which must not be, for that's against my course. 
I, under fair pretense of friendly ends, 160 

And well-placed words of glozing 48 courtesy, 
Baited with reasons not implausible, 
Wind me into the easy-hearted man, 

41 Hecate in ancient mythology was another name for Artemis or Diana. In the 
mi. Idle ages she was regarded as the queen of the witches. 

42 The gaudy, blabbing and remorseful day.— Shale. K. Hen. VI. Part II. IV. 1. 

43 Fastidious. Comus uses the word with a touch of sarcasm. 

44 Reveal. 45 A dance. 4S Hiding-places. 

47 In the sense that it retains the powder. Perhaps here there was a flash of 
colored light. 

48 Deceiving. 



COMUS : A MASQUE. 69 

And hug him into snares. When once her eye 
Hath met the virtue of this magic dust, 
I shall appear some harmless villager, 
Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear. 49 
But here she comes; I fairly 50 step aside, 
And hearken, if I may, her business here. 

The Lady enters.^ 

Lady. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true, 170 
My best guide now. Methought it was the sound 
Of riot and ill- managed merriment, 
Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe 
Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds, 
When, for their teeming flocks and granges 5 ' 2 full, 
In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan/ 3 
And thank the gods amiss. I should be loath 
To meet the rudeness and swilled 51 insolence 
Of such late wassailers ; 55 yet, oh ! where else 
Shall I inform 56 my unacquainted feet 180 

In the blind mazes of this tangled wood ? 
My brothers, when they saw me wearied out 
With this long way, resolving here to lodge 
Under the spreading favor of these pines, 
Stepped, as they said, to the next thicket side 
To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit 
As the kind hospitable woods provide. 
They left me then when the gray-hooded Even, 57 

49 Business. r, ° Softly. 

51 The part of the lady was taken by Lady Alice, the daughter of the Earl. 

Lady Alice was not over fifteen. — Masson. 
"Granaries. 

53 Pan was the go 1 of the woods and fields, and of the shepherds and their flocks. 
He was drawn with goat's feet, horns, aud shaggy hair. 

54 Drunken. 65 Revelers. 56 Direct 
67 Cf . Wordsworth's Sonnet. 

" It is a beauteous evening, calm and free; 
The holy time is quiet as a nun 
Breathless with adoration. "' 



7(j MILTON. 

Like a sad 08 votarist in palmer's weed, 

Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain. 190 

But where they are, and why they came not back, 

Is now the labor of my thoughts. 'Tis likeliest 

They had engaged their wandering steps too far ; 

And envious darkness, ere they could return, 

Had stole them from me. Else, O thievish Night, 

Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end, 

In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars 

That Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps 

With everlasting oil, to give due light 

To the misled and lonely traveler ? 200 

This is the place, as well as I may guess, 

W hence even now the tumult of loud mirth 

Was rife, and perfect in my listening ear ; 

Yet naught but single 59 darkness do I find. 

What might this be ? A thousand fantasies 

Begin to throng into my memory, 

Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, 

And airy tongues that syllable men's names 

On sands and shores and desert wildernesses. 

These thoughts may startle well, but not astound 210 

The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended 

By a strong siding champion, Conscience. 60 

O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope, 

Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings, 

And thou unblemished form of Chastity ! 

I see ye visibly, and now believe 

That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill 

Are but as slavish officers of vengeance, 61 

Would send a glistering 62 guardian, if need were, 

To keep my life and honor unassailed.— - 220 

Was 1 deceived, or did a sable cloud 

68 Serious. m Unmixed. u0 Three syllables. 

61 Another hint of Milton's theology. 62 Glistening. 



COMUS: A MASQUE. 71 

Tarn forth her silver lining on the night? 63 
I did not err : there does a sable cloud 
Turn forth her silver lining on the night, 
And casts a gleam over this tufted grove. 
I cannot hallo to my brothers, but 
Such noise as I can make to be heard farthest 
I'll venture; for my new-enlivened spirits 
Prompt me, and they perhaps are not far off. 

SONG. 

Sweet Echo? 1 * sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen 230 

Within thy airy shell 65 
-By slow Meander's™ mar gent green, 
And in the violet-embroidered rale 

Where the lovelorn nightingale 
Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well : 
Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair 
That likest thy Narcissus 61 are? 

0, if thou have 
Hid them in some flowery cure, % 

Tell me but where, 240 

Sweet Queen of Parley, Daughter of the Sphere I 
So may'st thou be translated to the skies. 
And give resounding grace** to all JteeiveiCs liar monies! 

63 What does this symbolize ? 

64 A nymph. The daughter of earth and air. She incurred the enmity of Juno, 
who deprived her of speech, except in answer to questions. Later, on account of 
her unrequited love for Narcissus, she pined away, until nothing was left of her 
but her voice. 

65 The atmosphere. 

66 A river in Asia Minor, whose course is so winding, that we have the verb " to 
meander" from it. 

67 A beautiful youth who, in punishment for his indifference to the love of the 
nymphs, was made to fall in love with his own image in the water, and at length 
was changed into the flower whiv.ii bears his name. 

68 The grace of an echo. The Goddess Echo was very popular in the old masks. 



72 MILTON. 

Comics. Can any mortal mixture of earth's mold 69 
Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment? 
Sure something holy lodges in that breast, 
And with these raptures moves the vocal air 
To testify his 70 hidden residence. 
How sweetly did they float upon the wings 
Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night, 250 

At every fall 71 smoothing the raven down 
Of darkness till it smiled ! I have oft heard 
My mother Circe, with the Sirens 72 three, 
Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades, 
Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs, 
Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul, 
And lap it in Elysium : Scylla 73 wept, 
And chid her barking waves into attention, 
And fell Charybdis 74 murmured soft applause. 

69 A compliment to Lady Alice. 

70 Used for its; the antecedent is " something.'' 1 The neuter singular pronoun 
was originally declined: nora. it, poss. his, obj. it. Thep^ss. its, formedfrom the 
analogy of other possessives began to be used in Shakespeare's time, but was not 
considered elegant English. In the Bible, edited in 1611, "its 1 does not once occur. 
Milton uses the form only three times in all his poetry, and in each case, the 
meaning would have been ambiguous, if he had employed his. 

71 Cadence. 

" That strain again ; it had a dying fall." 

Twelfth Night, I. 1, 4. 
72 Next, where the sirens dwell, you plough the seas ; 
Their song is death, and makes destruction please, 
Fly swift the dangerous coast ; let every ear 
Be stopp'd against the song ! 'Tis death to hear. 

Odys. XII. 51-62. (Pope's Trans.). 
In Homer, the sirens are not companions of Circe. 

73 A dangerous rock on the Italian coast between Italy and Sicily. On the 
Sicilian coast, there was a dangerous whirlpool, named Charybdis. As the distance 
between Italy and Sicily is only two miles, the ancients found it very hazardous to 
pass between these two dangerous points. This gave rise to the expression, 
" Avoid Scylla and fall into Cliai-yUMs. 1 ' Scylla was represented as surrounded by 
dogs ; this was suggested by the loud roarings of the sea against the rock. 

74 Homer thus describes Charybdis : 

" Beneath, Charybdis holds her boisterous reign, 
Midst roaring whirlpools, and absorbs the main : 
Thrice in her gulf, the boiling seas subside, 
Thrice in dire thunders, she refunds the tide." 

Odys. XII. 120-1K 



COMUS: A MASQUE. 73 

Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense, 260 

And in sweet madness robbed it of itself ; 
But such a sacred and home-felt delight, 
Such sober certainty of waking bliss, 
I never heard till now. I'll speak to her, 
And she shall be my queen. — Hail, foreign wonder! 
Whom certain these rough shades did never breed, 
Unless the goddess that in rural shrine 
DwelPst here with Pan or Sylvan, 75 by blest song 
Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog- 
To touch the prosperous growth of this tall wood. 270 

Lady. Nay, gentle shepherd, ill is lost that praise 
That is addressed to unattending ears. 
Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift 
How to regain my severed company, 
Compelled me to awake the courteous Echo 
To give me answer from her mossy couch. 

Comas. What chance, good Lady, hath bereft you thus ? 

Lady. Dim darkness and this leafy labyrinth. 

Comus. Could that divide you from near-ushering 
guides ? 

Lad j. They left me weary on a grassy turf. 280 

Comus. By falsehood, or discourtesy, or why? 

Lady. To seek i' the valley some cool friendly spring. 

Comas. And left your fair side all unguarded, Lady? 

Lady. They were but twain, and purposed quick re- 
turn. 

('nam*. Perhaps forestalling night prevented 76 them. 

Lady. I low easy my misfortune is to hit ! 

Comas. Imports their loss, beside the present need ? 

Lady. No less than if I should my brothers lose. 

Com as. Were they of manly prime, or youthful bloom? . 

Lady. As smooth as Hebe's " their unrazored lips. 290 

76 Sylvan. See II P. note 39. 7e Anticipated. » See L'All. note 19. 



74 MILTON. 

Comus. Two such I saw, what time the labored ox 
In his loose traces from the furrow came, 
And the swinked 78 hedger at his supper sat. 
I saw them under a green mantling vine, 
That crawls along the side of yon small hill, 
Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots ; 
Their port™ was more than human, as they stood. 
I took it for a fairy vision 80 
Of some gay creatures of the element, 81 
That in the colors of the rainbow live, 300 

And play \ the plighted 82 clouds. I was awe-strook, 8 " 
And, as I passed, I worshiped. If those you seek, 
It were a journey like the path to heaven 
To help you find them. 

Lady. Gentle villager, 

What readiest way would bring me to that place? 

Comus. Due west it rises from this shrubby point. 

Lady. To find out that, good shepherd, I suppose, 
In such a scant allowance of starlight, 
Would overtask the best land pilot's art, 
Without the sure guess of well-practiced feet. 310 

Comus. I know each lane, and every alley green, 
Dingle, or bushy dell, of this wild wood, 
And every bosky Si bourn from side to side, 
My daily walks and ancient neighborhood ; 
And, if your stray attendance be yet lodged, 
Or shroud within these limits, I shall know 
Ere morrow wake, or the low- roosted lark 85 
From her thatched pallet rouse. If otherwise, 
I can conduct you, Lady, to a low 

But loyal cottage, where you may be safe 320 

Till further quest. 

78 Tried. 79 Bearing. A compliment to the sons of the Earl. 

80 Three syllables. 81 Sky or air. 82 Folded. 

83 Strook is often used by Milton as the past tense and past participle of strike. 

84 Woody. 85 The lark builds her nest on the ground. 



COMUS: A MASQUE. 75 

Lady. Shepherd, T take thy word, 

And trust thy honest-offered courtesy, 
Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds, 
With smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls 
And courts of princes, where it first was named 86 
And yet is most pretended. In a place 
Less warranted than this, or less secure, 
I cannot be, that T should fear to change it. — 
Eye me, blest Providence, and square my trial 
To my proportioned strength ! s7 — Shepherd, lead on. 330 

[Exeunt. 
Enter the Two Brothers. 

Elder Brother. Unmuffle, ye faint stars ; and thou, fair 
moon, 
That wont'st to love the traveler's benison, 
Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud, 
And disinherit Chaos that reigns here 
In double night of darkness and of shades ; 
Or, if your influence be quite dammed up 
With black usurping mists, some gentle taper, 
Though a rush candle 88 from the wicker hole 
Of some clay habitation, visit us 

With thy long leveled rule of streaming light, 340 

And thou shalt be our star of Arcady, 89 
Or Tyrian Cynosure. 90 

Second. Brother. Or, if our eyes 

86 These lines are significant viewed in the light of Milton's later attitude toward 
Charles I. 

87 The part of the Elder Brother was taken by Lord Brackley, the son of the 
Earl of Bridgewater, who was then in his twelfth or thirteenth year. His brother, 
about a year younger, took the part of the Younger Brother. 

88 A candle made by dipping a rush in tallow. 

89 The Great Bear. Callisto, an Arcadian princess, was turned into the Great 
Bear ; hence the name Arcady. Her son Areas was changed at the same time 
into the Lesser Bear. The Greek mariners steered their ships by the Great Bear. 

80 Tyrian cynosure. The pole-star, by which the Phoenicians steered their ships. 
Tyre was a city of Phoenicia ; hence the name Tyrian. See L'AUegro, note 37. 



70 MILTON. 

Be barred that happiness, might Ave but hear 

The folded flocks, penned in their wattled cotes, 91 

Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops, 92 

Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock 

Count the night watches to his feathery dames, 

'Twould be some solace yet, some little cheering, 

In this close dungeon of innumerous 93 boughs. 

But, oh, that hapless virgin, our lost sister ! 850 

Where may she wander now, whither betake her 

From the chill dew, amongst rude burs and thistles ? 

Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now, 

Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm 

Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with sad fears. 

What if in wild amazement and affright, 

Or, while we speak, within the direful grasp 

Of savage hunger, or of savage heat ! 

Elder Brother. Peace, brother : be not over-exquisite 94 
To cast the fashion of uncertain evils ; 3G0 

For, grant they be so, while they rest unknown, • 
What need a man forestall his date of grief, 
And run to meet what he would most avoid? 
Or, if they be but false alarms of fear, 
How bitter is such self-delusion ! 95 
I do not think my sister so to seek, 96 
Or so unprincipled 97 in virtue's book, 
And the sweet peace that goodness bosoms ever, 
As that the single want of light and noise 
(Not being in danger, as I trust she is not) 370 

Could stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts, 
And put them into misbecoming plight. 
Virtue could see to do what Virtue would 
By her own radiant light, though sun and moon 

91 A sheepfold formed by interwoven twigs. 

92 Shepherd's pipe. It was made of an oaten stock, with holes or stops made in 
the side. 8S Innumerable. '■'* Too curious. " 5 Four syllables. 

99 An idiom, meaning lack of knowledge. eT So untaught. 



COMUS: A MASQUE. 77 

Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self 

Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, 

Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation, 98 

She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings, 

That, in the various bustle of resort, 

Were all to-ruffled," and sometimes impaired. 380 

He that has light within his own clear breast, 

May sit i' the center, 100 and enjoy bright day : 

But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts 

Benighted Avalks under the midday sun ; 

Himself is his own dungeon. 

Second Brother. 'Tis most true 

That musing Meditation most affects 
The pensive secrecy of desert cell, 
Far from the cheerful haunt of men and herds, 
And sits as safe as in a senate house ; 

For who would rob a hermit of his weeds, 390 

His few books, or his beads, or maple dish, 
Or do his gray hairs any violence? 
But Beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree ' 0l 
Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard 
Of dragon watch with unenchanted eve 
To save her blossoms, and defend )u r fruit, 
From the rash hand of bold Incontinence. 
You may as well spread out th > i lsunned heaps 
Of miser's treasure by an outlav \ Hen, 
And tell me it is safe, as bid me ho] s 400 

Danger will wink on Opportunity, 
And let a single helpless maiden pass 
Uninjured in this wild surrounding waste. 
Of night or loneliness it recks me not; 

98 Five syllables. 

99 " To" is here an oM prefix use 1 to intensify the meaning <>f the verb. 

100 The center of the earth. 

2U1 A tree which bore golden apples sprung up :n honor of the marriage of 
Jupiter and Juno. It was guarded by a dragon. 



78 MILTON. 

I fear the dread events that dog them both, 
Lest some ill-greeting touch attempt the person 
Of our unowned sister. 

Elder Brother. I do not, brother, 

Infer 102 as if I thought my sister's state 
Secure without all doubt or controversy ; 
Yet, where an equal poise of hope and fear 410 

Does arbitrate the event, my nature is 
That I incline to hope rather than fear, 
And gladly banish squint suspicion. 103 
My sister is not so defenseless left 
As you imagine ; she has a hidden strength, 
Which you remember not. 

Second Brother. What hidden strength, 

Unless the strength of Heaven, if you mean that ? 

Elder Brother. I mean that too, but yet a hidden 
strength, 
Which, if I04 Heaven gave it, may be termed her own. 
'Tis chastity, my brother, chastity : 420 

She that has that is clad in complete 105 steel, 
And, like a quivered nymph with arrows keen, 
May trace huge forests, and unharbored ]06 heaths, 
Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds ; 
Where, through the sacred rays of chastity, 
No savage fierce, bandit, or mountaineer, 
Will dare to soil her virgin purity. 
Yea, there where very desolation dwells, 
By grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades, 
She may pass on with unblenched majesty, 430 

Be it not done in pride, or in presumption. 
Some say no evil thing that walks by night, 
In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen, 
Blue meager hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost 

102 Argue. 103 Four syllables. 1M if— even if. 

105 Complete ; accent on the first syllable. 106 Yielding no shelter. 



COMUS : A MASQUE. 79 

That breaks his magic chains at curfew time. 107 

No goblin or swart 1(W faery of the mine, 

Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity. 109 

Do ye believe me yet, or shall I call 

Antiquity from the old schools of Greece 

To testify the arms of chastity ? 440 

Hence had the huntress Dian her dread bow, 

Fair silver-shafted queen, forever chaste, 

Wherewith she tamed the brinded lioness 

And spotted mountain pard, but set at naught 

The frivolous bolt of Cupid ; gods and men 

Feared her stern frown, and she was queen o' the woods. 

What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield lir ' 

That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin, 

Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone, 

But rigid looks of chaste austerity, 450 

And noble grace that dashed brute violence 

With sudden adoration and blank awe? 

So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity 

That, when a soul is found sincerely so, 111 

A thousand liveried angels lackey her, 

107 That breaks his magic chains at curfew time. According to popular supersti- 
tion, the ghosts that for some reason could not rest after death, began to walk the 
earth at the sound of the curfew, and continued their wanderings, until the 
crowing of the cock. 

108 swart-black. Thero are many stories of mines baing inhabited by gnomes 
and fairies. 

109 Yet I have heard (my mother told it me, 
And now I do believe it) if I keep 
My virgin-flower uncropt, chaste and fair, 
No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf or fiend, 
Satyr, or other power that haunts the groves, 
Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion 
Draw me to wander after idle fires. 

Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, I. 1. 
no The Gorgon Medusa had been a beautiful maiden. But she bmsted one day 
that her hair was more beautiful than that of Minerva, who, as a punishment, 
changed her locks into serpents, and made her so ugly that whoever looked upon 
her was changed into stone. Perseus, by means of a mirror, cut off her head, and 
presented it to Minerva, who wore it on her shield 
111 The Hues that follow show the influence of Plato on the mind of Milton. 



80 MILTON. 

Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, 

And in clear dream and solemn vision 112 

Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear ; 

Till oft converse with heavenly habitants 

Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape, 460 

The unpolluted temple of the mind. 

And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence, 

Till all be made immortal. But, when lust, 

By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, 

But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, 

Lets in defilement to the inward parts, 

The soul grows clotted by contagion, 

Iinbodies, and imbrutes, m till she quite lose 

The divine property of her first being. 

Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp 470 

Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepuichers, 

Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave, 

As loath to leave the body that it m loved, 

And linked itself by carnal sensualty 

To a degenerate and degraded state. 

Second Brother. How charming is divine philosophy ! 115 
Not harsh and crabbed, 116 as dull fools suppose, 
But musical as is Apollo's lute, 
And a perpetual feast of neetared sweets, 
Where no crude surfeit reigns. 

Elder Brother. List ! list ! I hear 480 

Some far-off hallo break the silent air. 

Second Brother M 3 thought so too ; what should it be ? 

Elder BroL.Kr. For certain, 

Either some one, like us, night foundered here ; 
Or else seme neighbor woodman ; or, at worst, 
Some roving robber calling to his fellows. 

112 Three syllables. m Imbodies and imbrutes. Becomes material and brutal. 

114 One of the shadows. 

116 Another allusion to the philosophy of Plato, 116 Bitter. 



COMUS : A MASQUE. 81 

Second Brother. Heaven keep my sister ! Again, 
again, and near ! 
Best draw, and stand upon our guard. 

Elder Brother. I'll hallo. 

If he be friendly, he comes well : if not, 
Defense is a good cause, and Heaven be for us ! 

Enter the Attendant Spirit habited like a shepherd. 

That hallo I should know. What are you? speak. 490 
Come not too near ; you fall on iron stakes else. 

Spirit. What voice is that? my young lord? speak 

again. 
Second Brother. O brother, 'tis my father's shepherd, 

sure. 
Elder Brother. Thyrsis ! m whose artful strains have 
oft delayed 
The huddling 118 brook to hear his madrigal, 
And sweetened every musk rose of the dale. — 
How earnest thou here, good swain ? Hath any ram 
Slipped from the fold, or young kid lost his dam, 
Or straggling wether the pent flock forsook ? 
How couldst thou find this dark sequestered nook ? 500 

Sjjirit. O my loved master's heir, and his next joy, 119 
I came not here on such a trivial toy 
As a strayed ewe, or to pursue the stealth 
Of pilfering wolf ; not all the fleecy wealth 
That doth enrich these downs is worth a thought 
To this my errand, and the care it brought. 
But, oh ! my virgin Lady, where is she ? 
How chance she is not in your company ? 

Elder Brother. To tell thee sadly, Shepherd, without 
blame 

'"Thyrsis. A name common in pastorni noptry, since the time of Theocritus. 
Tli is speech of the elder brother i? a compliment to Lawes. 
118 huddling, because the waters stop in their course to listen. 
110 his next joy. The younger brother, lu this line, he addresses bcth brothers. 

6 



82 MILTON. 

Or our neglect, we lost her as we came. 510 

/Spirit. Ay me unhappy ! then my fears are true. 

Elder Brother, What fears, good Thyrsis? Prithee 
briefly show. 

Spirit. I'll tell ye. 'Tis not vain or fabulous. 
(Though so esteemed by shallow ignorance) 
What the sage poets, 1 ' taught by the heavenly Muse, 
(Storied 121 of old in high immortal verse 
Of dire Chimeras and enchanted isles,' 22 
And rifted rocks whose entrance leads to hell ; 123 
For such there be, but unbelief is blind. 

Within the navel 124 of this hideous wood, 520 

Immured in cypress shades, a sorcerer dwells, 
Of Bacchus and of Circe born, great Com us, 
Deep skilled in all his mother's witcheries, 
And here to every thirsty wanderer 
By sly enticement gives his baneful cup, 
With many murmurs mixed, whose pleasing poison 
The visage quite transforms of him that drinks, 
And the inglorious likeness of a beast 
Fixes instead, unmolding reason's mintage 125 
Charactered in the face. This have I learnt 530 

Tending my flocks hard by i' the hilly crofts ljr> 
That brow this bottom glade ; whence night by night 
He and his monstrous rout are heard to howl 
Like stabled wolves m or tigers at their prey, 
Doing abhorred rites to Hecate 128 
In their obscured haunts of inmost bowers. 



120 sage poets ; Homer and Virgil. 121 Cf . II P. note 44. 

122 Chimeras ; a fire-breathing monster, with the head of a lion, the body of a 
goat, and the tail of a serpent. Enchanted isles. These may refer to the islands 
of Circe and Calypso, on both of which Ulysses was long delayed by enchantment 

123 Theseus, Pirithous, Hercules and ^Eneas, all visited Hades, while alive, and 
all but Pirithous returned. 

124 Center. 

125 Changing the expression which reason or intelligence gives to the face. 

126 Pastures. ™ Wolves in their caves. " 28 See note 41. 



COMUS: A MASQUE. 83 

Yet have they many baits and guileful spells 

To inveigle and invite the unwary sense 

Of them that pass unvveeting 129 by the way. 

This evening late, by then the chewing flocks 540 

Had ta'en their supper on the savory herb 

Of knotgrass dew-besprent, and were in fold, 

I sat me down to watch upon a bank 

With ivy canopied, and interwove 

With flaunting honeysuckle, and began, 

Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy, 

To meditate 1::0 my rural minstrelsy, 

Till fancy had her fill. But ere a close 

The wonted roar was up amidst the woods, 

And filled the air with barbarous dissonance ; 550 

At which I ceased, and listened them awhile, 

Till an unusual stop of sudden silence 

Gave respite to the drowsy frighted m steeds 

That draw the litter of close-curtained Sleep. 

At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound 

Rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes, 

And stole upon the air, that even Silence 

Was took ere she was ware, and washed she might 

Deny her nature, and be never more, 

Still l32 to be so displaced. I was all ear, 560 

And took in strains that might create a soul 

Under the ribs of Death. But, oh ! ere long 

Too well I did perceive it was the voice 

Of my most honored Lady, your dear sister. 

Amazed I stood, harrowed with grief and fear; 

And " O poor hapless nightingale," thought I, 

" How sweet thou sing'st, how near the deadly snare ! " 

Then down the lawns 133 I ran with headlong haste, 

12(1 Unwitting, unknowing. ' so To apply myself to pastoral poetry. 

131 Both drowsy and frightened. 132 Ever, its usual meaning in Shakespeare. 

113 Cf . L'AH. note 132. 



%± MILTON. 

Through paths and turnings often trod by day, 

Till, guided by mine ear, I found the place 570 

Where that damned wizard, hid in sly disguise 

(For so by certain signs I knew), had met 

Already, ere my best speed could prevent, 

The aidless innocent lady, his wished prey ; 

Who gently asked if he had seen such two, 

Supposing him some neighbor villager. 

Longer I durst not stay, but soon I guessed 

Ye were the two she meant : with that I sprang 

Into swift flight, till I had found you here ; 

But further know I not. 

Second Brother. O night and shades, 580 

How are ye joined with hell in triple knot 
Against the unarmed weakness of one virgin, 
Alone and helpless ! Is this the confidence 
You gave me, brother ? 

Elder Brother. Yes, and keep it still ; 

Lean on it safely ; not a period 13i 
Shall be unsaid for me. Against the threats 
Of malice or of sorcery, or that power 
Which erring men call Chance, this I hold firm : 
Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt ; 
Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled ; 590 

Yea, even that which Mischief meant most harm 
Shall in the happy trial prove most glory. 
But evil on itself shall back recoil, 
And mix no more with goodness, when at last, 
Gathered like scum, and settled to itself, 
It shall be in eternal restless change 
Self-fed and self-consumed. If this fail, 
The pillared firmament 135 is rottenness, 

134 Sentence. 

135 These flaws .... 

As dangerous to the pillared frame of Heaven, 
Or to the earth's dark basis underneath.— P. R. IV. 454-456. 



COMUS : A MASQUE. 85 

And earth's base built on stubble. But come, let's on ! 

Against the opposing will and arm of Heaven COO 

]\Iay never this just sword be lifted up ; 

But, for that damned magician, let him be girt 

With all the grisly legions 136 that troop 

Under the sooty flag of Acheron, 117 

Harpies and Hydras, or all the monstrous forms 138 

Twixt Africa and Ind, Til find him out, 

And force him to return his purchase 139 back, 

Or drag him by the curls to a foul death, 

Cursed as his life. 

Spirit. Alas ! good venturous youth, 

I love thy courage yet, and bold emprise ; 610 

But here thy sword can do thee little stead. 
Far other arms and other weapons must 
Be those that quell the might of hellish charms. 
He with his bare wand can unthread thy joints, 
And crumble all thy sinews. 

Elder Brother, Why, prithee, Shepherd, 

How durst thou then thyself approach so near 
As to make this relation ? 

Spirit. Care and utmost shifts 

How to secure the Lady from snrprisal 
Brought to my mind a certain shepherd lad, 140 
Of small regard to see to, yet well skilled 620 

In every virtuous m plant and healing herb 
That spreads her verdant leaf to the morning ray. 
He loved me well, and oft would beg me sing ; 

"« Trisyllabic. 

137 One of the rivers of the Lower World. Here used for the Lower World itself. 

is8 Harpies. They were monsters, three in number, with the faces of women, 
but with bodies, wings and claws like vultures. Hydras ; water-serpents. One of 
the labors of Hercules was to slay the hydra of Lerna, a nine-headed monster 
that ravaged the country about Argos. According to Vergil, a fifty-headed hydra 
guarded the entrance to Tartarus. 

139 Booty, spoils, gain. 

140 Probably a reference to Diodati, Milton's friend U1 Cf. II P. note 34. 



86 MILTON. 

Which when I did, he on the tender grass 

Would sit, and hearken even to ecstasy, 

And in requital ope his leathern scrip, 

And show me simples of a thousand names, 142 

Telling their strange and vigorous faculties. 

Amongst the rest a small unsightly root, 

But of divine effect, he culled me out. 630 

The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it, 

But in another country, as he said, 

Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil : 

Unknown, and like esteemed, and the dull swain 

Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon ; Ui 

And yet more med'cinal is it than that Moly 144 

That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave. 

He called it Harmony, 145 and gave it me, 

And bade me keep it as of sovran use 

'Gainst all enchantments, mildew blast, or damp, 640 

Or ghastly Furies' apparition. 140 

I pursed it up, but little reckoning made, 

Till now that this extremity compelled. 

But now I find it true ; for by this means 

142 simples ; medicinal herbs. 

143 mended shoes. 

144 A plant given by Hermes to Ulysses, to protect him from the enchantments 

of Circe. 

Thus while he spoke, the sovereign plant he drew, 
Where on the all-bearing earth unmark'd it grew, 
And show'd its nature and its wondrous power : 
Black was the root, but milky white the flower ; 
Moly the name, to mortals hard to find, 
But all is easy to the ethereal kind. 

The Odyssey, X. 361-366 (Pope's Trans.). 

145 This name is an invention of Milton's, and perhaps is taken from Hssmonia, 
an old name for Thessaly, the land of magic. Coleridge, however, sees in this 
plant as described by Milton, a symbol of the Redemption by the Cross, which " in 
another country," or in heaven, bears "a bright golden flower," or glory. In 
support of this view, Coleridge derives the name from two Greek words, meaning 
blood-wine, " the great symbol of the Death on the Cross." 

146 The furies were three in number, and were the attendants of Proserpina. 
Thoy pursued the guilty with severe punishments, chief among which were the 
pangs of remorse. Apparition ; five syllables. 



COMUS : A MASQUE. 87 

I knew the foul enchanter, though disguised, 

Entered the very lime twigs m of his spells, 

And yet came off. If you have this about you 

(As I will give you when we go) you may 

Boldly assault the necromancer's hall ; 

Where if he be, with dauntless hardihood 650 

And brandished blade rush on him ; break his glass, 

And shed the luscious liquor on the ground ; 

But seize his wand. Though he and his curst crew 

Fierce sign of battle make, and menace high, 

Or, like the sons of Vulcan, 148 vomit smoke, 

Yet will they soon retire, if he but shrink. 

Elder Brother. Thyrsis, lead on apace ; I'll follow thee ; 
And some good angel bear a shield before us ! 

The Scene changes to a stately palace, set out with all manner of 
deliciousness : soft music, tables spread with, all dainties. 
Comus appears with his rabble, and the Lady set in an en- 
chanted chair: to whom lie offers his glass ; which she puts by , 
and goes about to rise. 

Comus. Nay, Lady, sit. If I but wave this wand, 
Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster, G60 

And you a statue, or as Daphne U9 was, 
Root bound, that lied Apollo. 

Lady. Fool, do not boast, 

Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind 
With all thy charms, although this corporal rind 
Thou hast immanacled, while Heaven sees good. 

( f omus. Why are you vexed, Lady ? why do you frown ? 
Here dwell no frowns, nor anger ; from these gates 
Sorrow flies far. See, here be all the pleasures 
That fancy can beget on youthful thoughts, 

147 Literally twigs, smeared with bird-lime for catching birds. 

148 A reference to Cacus, a son of Vulcan. He stole the oxen of Hercules, who 
in revenge put him to death. According to Vergil, he " vomited smoke." 

149 A nymph who was changed into a laurel tree to escape Apollo. 



gg MILTON. 

When the fresh blood grows lively, and returns 670 

Brisk as the April buds in primrose season. 

And first behold this cordial julep 15 ° here, 

That flames and dances in his 151 crystal bounds, 

With spirits of balm and fragrant syrups mixed. 

Not that nepenthes 152 which the wife 153 of Thone 

In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena, 

Is of such power to stir up joy as this, 

To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst. 

Why should you be so cruel to yourself, 

And to those dainty limbs, which Nature lent 154 680 

For gentle usage and soft delicacy ? 

But you invert the covenants of her trust, 

And harshly deal, like an ill borrower, 

With that which you received on other terms, 

Scorning the unexempt condition 

By which all mortal frailty must, subsist, 

Refreshment after toil, ease after pain, 

That have been tired all clay without repast, 

And timely rest have wanted. But, fair virgin, 

This will restore all soon. 

Lady. 'Twill not, false traitor ! 690 

'Twill not restore the truth and honesty 
That thou hast banished from thy tongue with lies. 
Was this the cottage and the safe abode 
Thou told'st me of? What grim aspects are these, 

150 A sweet drink. 151 See note 70. 

152 This word means pain dispelling. Its power is thus described by Homer : 

Charmed with that virtuous draught, the exalted mind 

All sense of woe delivers to the wind, 

Though on the blazing pile his parent lay, 

Or a loved brother groaned his life away, 

Or darling son, oppressed by ruffian force, 

Fell deathless at his feet, a mangled corse ; 

From morn to eve, impassive and serene, 

The man entranced would view the deathful scene. 

Ody. IV. 307-314. (Pope Trans.). 

153 Polydamna, an Egyptian. W Of. Shakespeare, Sonnet IV. 3. 

• H Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend." 



COMUS ; A MASQUE. §9 

These ugly-headed monsters ? Mercy guard me ! 

Hence with thy brewed enchantments, foul deceiver ! 

Hast thou betrayed my credulous innocence 

With vizored falsehood and base forgery ? 

And would'st thou seek again to trap me here 

With liquorish 155 baits, fit to insnare a brute? 700 

Were it a draft for Juno when she banquets, 

I would not taste thy treasonous offer. None 

But such as are good men can give good things ; 

And that which is not good is not delicious 

To a well-governed and wise appetite. 

Comus. O foolishness of men ! that lend their ears 
To those budge 156 doctors of the Stoic 157 fur, 
And fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub, 158 
Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence ! 
Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth 710 

With such a full and 1111 withdrawing hand, 
Covering the earth with odors, fruits, and flocks, 
Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable, 
But all to please and sate the curious 159 taste ? 
And set to work millions of spinning worms, 
That in their green shops weave the smooth -haired silk, 
To deck her sons ; and, that no corner might 
Be vacant of her plenty, in her own loins 
She hutched 16 ° the all-worshiped ore and precious gems, 
To store her children with. If all the world 720 

Should, in a pet of temperance, feed on pulse, 



155 Pleasing to the palate. 

156 Lambskin, much used in the Elizabethan age on the college gowns. It is still 
worn at Cambridge by bachelors of arts. The word later came to mean pompous, 
solemn. 

157 The Stoics were stern moralists. They condemned pleasure and repressed all 
emotion. 

158 T ne Cynics, believing that virtue was the only good, held in contempt all in- 
tellectual attainments, as well as all worldly pleasures and social customs. 
Diogenes, the most famous of the Cynics, lived in a tub. 

16q Critical. 1C0 Hoarded. 



DO MILTON. 

Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze, 
The All-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised, 
Not half his riches known, and yet despised ; 
And we should serve him as a grudging master, 
As a penurious niggard of his wealth, 
And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons, 
Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight, 
And strangled with her waste fertility ; 
The earth cumbered, and the winged air darked with 
plumes, 7o0 

The herds would overmultitude their lords ; 
The sea o'erfraught would swell, and the unsought dia- 
monds 
Would so emblaze the forehead of the deep, 161 
And so bestud with stars, that they below 
Would grow inured to light, and come at last 
To gaze upon the sun with shameless brows. 
List, Lady ; be not coy, and be not cozened 1C2 
With that same vaunted name, Virginity. 
Beauty is Nature's coin ; must not be hoarded, 163 
But must be current ; and the good thereof 740 

Consists in mutual and partaken bliss, 
Unsavory in the enjoyment of itself. 
If you let slip time, like a neglected rose 
It withers on the stalk with languished head. 
Beauty is Nature's brag, and must be shown 
In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, 
Where most may wonder at the workmanship. 
It is for homely features to keep home ; 
They had their name thence ; coarse complexions 
And cheeks of sorry grain 164 will serve to ply 750 

161 This may mean the sea or the center of the earth. Each reader must decide 
this for himself, as there is good authority for both interpretations. 
1G2 Cheated. 

163 Shakespeare has expressed this thought again and again in the sonnets. 
«* Color. See II P. line 33. 



COMUS : A MASQUE. 91 

The sampler, and to tease 165 the huswife's wool. 
What need of vermeil-tinctured lip for that, 
Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the morn ? 
There was another meaning in these gifts : 
Think what, and be advised ; yon are but young yet. 

Lady. I had not thought to have unlocked my lips 
In this unhallowed air, but that this juggler 
Would think to charm my judgment, as mine eyes, 
Obtruding false rules pranked in reason's garb. 
I hate when Vice can bolt her arguments 1,i6 760 

And Virtue has no tongue to check her pride, 
Impostor ! do not charge most innocent Nature, 
As if she would her children should be riotous 
With her abundance. She, good cateress, 
Means her provision only to the good, 
That live according to her sober laws, 
And holy dictate of spare Temperance. 167 
If every just man that now pines with want 
Had but a moderate and beseeming share 
Of that which lewdly-pampered Luxury 770 

Now heaps upon some few with vast excess, 
Nature's fall blessings would be well dispensed 
In unsuperfluons even proportion, 168 
And she no whit encumbered with her store; 
And then the Giver would be better thanked, 
I lis praise due paid : for swinish gluttony 
Ne'er looks to Heaven amidst his gorgeous feast, 
But with besotted base ingratitude 
Crams, and blasphemes his Feeder. Shall I go on? 
Or have I said enow? To him that dares 780 

Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words 

165 To comb or card the wool. 

106 bolt ; originally it meant to separate the meal from the bran. Here to refine 
her arguments, make them so subtle that they deceive. 167 Cf . II P. line 46. 

108 In scansion, unsuperfluous is given four syllables, even, one, and proportion, 
four. 



92 MILTON. 

Against the sun clad power of chastity, 

Fain would I something say ; — yet to what end ? 

Thou hast nor ear, nor soul, to apprehend 

The sublime notion and high mystery 

That must be uttered to untold the sage 

And serious doctrine of virginity ; 

And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know 

More happiness than this thy present lot. 

Enjoy your dear wit, and gay rhetoric, 790 

That hath so well been taught her dazzling fence ; 169 

Thou art not fit to hear thyself convinced. 

Yet, should I try, the uncontrolled m worth 

Of this pure cause would kindle my rapt spirits 

To such a flame of sacred vehemence 

That dumb things would be moved to sympathise, 

And the brute Earth would lend her nerves, and shake, 

Till all thy magic structures, reared so high, 

Were shattered into heaps o'er thy false head. 

Comus. She fables not. I feel that I do fear 800 

Her words set off by some superior power ; 
And, though not mortal, yet a cold shuddering dew 
Dips me all o'er, as when the wrath of Jove 
Speaks thunder and the chains of Erebus m 
To some of Saturn's crew. 172 I must dissemble, 
And try her yet more strongly — Come, no more ! 
This is mere moral babble, and direct 
Against the canon laws of our foundation. 173 
I must not suffer this ; yet 'tis but the lees 
And settlings of a melancholy blood. 174 810 

169 Here it means to fence in an argument. 

170 Uncontrollable, irresistible. m The Lower Regions. 

172 The Titans. They were giants who took the part of Saturn, in the war 
between Saturn and Jupiter. They were overcome by the forces of Jupiter, bound 
in chains, and placed in the cave of Tartarus. 

173 Milton speaks as if Comus and his band had formed an institution like a 
college. 

»'• Melancholy was supposed to settle in the blood like dregs or lees In wine. 



COMUS: A MASQUE. <);> 

Bat this will cure all straight; one sip of this 
Will bathe the drooping' spirits in delight 
Beyond the bliss of dreams. Be wise, and taste. 

The Brothers rush in with swords drawn, wrest his glass out of his 
hand, and break it against the ground: his rout make sign of 
resistance, but are all driven in. The Attendant Spirit comes in. 

Spirit. What ! have you let the false enchanter scape ? 
Oh, ye mistook ; ye should have snatched his wand, 
And bound him fast. Without his rod reversed, 175 
And backward mutters of dissevering power, 
We cannot free the Lady that sits here 
In stony fetters fixed and motionless. 

Yet stay, be not disturbed ; now I bethink me, 820 

Some other means I have which may be used, 
Which once of Meliboeus old I learnt, 170 
The soothest 17T shepherd that e'er piped on plains. 

There is a gentle nymph not far from hence, 
That with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream ; 
Sabrina is her name ; a virgin pure ; 
Whilom she was the daughter of Locrine, 177 '' 
That had the scepter from his father Brute. 

175 There was an old belief that the effect of a charm could be undone, by 
reversing the process by which it was produced. 

116 Meliboeus ; Geoffrey of Monmouth may be meant here. He was a Welsh 
priest who lived at the court of Henry I. He published what he called a History 
of Britain, in which he traced the history of the British kings from Brute, the 
great-grandson of .Eneas. He it was who introduced King Arthur to the English 
people. Much in the book is evidently false, and Geoffrey was considered by the 
court a base fabricator ; but many of his stories were legends which had been 
kept alive among the Welsh people. 

1,7 Soothest ; probably used sarcastically, if Geoffrey is meant by the shepherd. 

177 « According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Locrine, the eldest son of Brutus, 
became king of all theBritains. He was engaged to Gwendolen of Cornwall, when 
he fell in love with a German princess Estrildis. As he was compelled to keep his 
promise and marry Gwendolen, he hid Estrildis in his palace, where she bore him 
a beautiful daughter, Sabrina. Later the king divorced Guend >len and acknowl- 
edged Estrildis and Sabrina as his wife and daughter. But Gwendolen fought a 
battle with her husband, in which he was slain. After his death, she ordered 
Estrildis and Sabrina to bs thrown into the Severn. As Spenser tells the story 
(F. 3 II.) only Sabrina is drowned. 



94 MILTON. 

She, guiltless damsel, flying the mad pursuit 

Of her enraged stepdame, Guendolen, 830 

Commended her fair innocence to the flood 

That stayed her flight with his crossflowing course. 

The water nymphs, that in the bottom played, 

Held up their pearled wrists, and took her in, 

Bearing her straight to aged Nereus' m hall ; 

Who, piteous of her woes, reared her lank 1T ' J head, 

And gave her to his daughters to imbathe 

In nectared lavers strewed with asphodel, 180 

And through the porch and inlet of each sense 

Dropt in ambrosial oils, till she revived, 840 

And underwent a quick immortal change, 

Made Goddess of the river. Still she retains 

Her maiden gentleness, and oft at eve 

Visits the herds along the twilight meadows, 

Helping all urchin blasts, 181 and ill-luck signs 

That the shrewd meddling elf delights to make, 182 

Which she with precious vialed liquors heals : 

For which the shepherds, at their festivals, 

Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays, 

And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream, 850 

Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils ; 

And, as the old swain 183 said, she can unlock 

The clasping charm, and thaw the numbing spell, 

If she be right invoked in warbled song ; 

For maidenhood she loves, and will be swift 

To aid a virgin, such as was herself, 

In hard besetting need. This will I try, 

And add the power of some adjuring verse. 

37s Nereus. The father of the sea-nymphs. 17n Drooping. 

180 A plant of the lily-kind, which grew in the Elysian fields. In English, the 
word has been corrupted into daffodil and daffodowndilly. 

181 Urchin was another name of the hedgehog. Elves often assumed the form of 
the hedgehog, when bent on mischief. Blasts, blights. 

i82 meddling elf ; Cf . L Al. 105. 18a Meliboeus, cf. line 822. 



COMUS : A MASQUE. 95 

SONG. 

Sahrina fair, 

Listen where thou art sitting 8G0 

Under tht glassy, coo/, translucent wave, 

In tioisted braids of lilies knitting 
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair/ lsi 

Listen for dear honor's sake, 

Goddess of the silver Jala, 
Listen and savt ! 

Listen, and appear to us, 

In name of great Oceanus, 185 

By the earth-shaking X> j i>tnm\^ mace, 

And Tethys 1 grave majestic pace ; 870 

Jiy hoary Nereus 1 wrinkled look, 

Ami the Carpathian wizard's hook/ 

184 Water is dropping from her yellow or amber-colored hair. 

185 All the mythological beings here enumerated belong to the sea. Oceanus 
was the oldest sea-god and Tethys was his wife. Nereus, commonly known as the 
41 old man of the sea," married a daughter of Oceanus, by whom he had fifty 
daughters called the Nereids ; one of them was Thetis, who afterwards became the 
mother of Achilles. Triton was the son of Neptune. The lower part of his body 
was a fish. He was the trumpeter of the ocean. 

" From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn.'" 

Holmes, Chambered Nautilus. 
The Carpathian wizard was Proteus, who lived at Carpatheus, an island in the 
iEgean. He tended the sea-calves of Neptune, and so was represented with a 
shepherd's hook. He had the power of changing his shape at will. 
Wordsworth in one of his sonnets, thus refers to the belief in these myths : 
...... I'd rather be 

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn. 
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 
Glaucus was a fisherman, who ate of a certain herb, and became half man and 
half fish. Leucothea was Ino, the daughter of Cadmus. In order to escape her 
husband she leaped from a cliff into the sea, with her son Melicertes in her arms. 
She was changed into a sea goddess under the name of Leucothea, and her son 
into a god by the name of Palaemon. Sailors invoked their aid against shipwreck, 
Parthenope and Ligeia were sirens. 



96 MILTON. 

By seal)/ Triton *s winding shell, 
And old soothsaying Glaucus 1 spell; 
By Leucothea? s lonely hands. 
And he?' son that rules the strands / 
By Thetis 1 tinsel* slippered feet™ 
And the songs of Sirens sweet / 
By dead Parthenope's dear tomb, 

And fair Bigeas golden comb, 880 

Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks 
Sleeking her soft alluring locks ; 
By all the nymphs that nightly dance 
Upon thy streams with wily glance / 
Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head 
From thy coral-paven bed, 
And bridle in thy headlong ware, 
Till thou our summons answered have. 

Bisten and save! 

Sabrina rises, attended by Water Nymphs, and sings. 

By the rushy fringed bank, 890 

Where grows the willow and the osier dank, 

My sliding chariot stays, 
Thick set with agate, and the azutn 187 sheen 
Of turkis blue, 188 and emerald green, 

That in the channel strays ; 

Whilst from off the waters feet 
Thus I set my printless feet 
O'er the cowslip's velvet head, 
That bends not as I tread. 
Gentle swain, at thy request 900 

I am here! 

186 Homer calls Thetis silver-footed. Which epithet is the more beautiful ? 

187 Azure. This form of the word is peculiar to Milton. 

188 Tou/quoise. " Turkis is the Turkish stone, so called because, though Persian, 
it came by way of Turkey." Masson. 



COMUS : A MASQUE. 97 

Spirit. Goddess dear, 
We implore thy powerful hand 
To undo the charmed band 
Of true virgin here distressed 
Through the force and through the wile 
Of unblessed enchanter vile. 

Sabrina. Shepherd, 'tis my office best 
To help ensnared chastity. — 

Brightest Lady, look on me. 910 

Thus I sprinkle on thy breast 
Drops that from my fountain pure 
I have kept of precious cure ; 
Thrice upon thy ringer's tip, 
Thrice upon thy rubied lip : 
Next this marble venomed seat, 
Smeared with gums of glutinous heat, 
I touch with chaste palms moist and cold. 
Now the spell hath lost his hold ; 

And I must haste ere morning hour 920 

To wait in Amphitrite's 189 bower. 

Sabrina descends, and the Lady rises out of Iter seat. 

Spirit. Virgin, daughter of Locrine, 
Sprung of old Anchises' line,' 90 
May thy brimmed waves for this 
Their full tribute never miss 
From a thousand petty rills, 
That tumble down the snowy hills : 
Summer drouth or singed air 
Never scorch thy tresses fair, 
Nor wet October's torrent flood 930 

189 Amphitrite. The wife of Neptune, and daughter of Nereus. 

1!, ° The genealogy, as represented by Geoffrey of Monmouth was Anchises, a 
prince of Troy, iEneas. Ascanius, Sylvius, Brutus, Loerine. .-Eneas went from 
Troy to Italy, while Brutus came from Italy to England. Since the mothar of 
^Eneas was Venus, Geoffrey gave to the kings of Britain descent from the gods. 
7 



98 MILTON. 

Thy molten crystal fill with mud ; 
May thy billows roll ashore 
The beryl and the golden ore ; 
May thy lofty head 191 be crowned 
With many a tower and terrace round, 
And here and there thy banks upon 
With groves of myrrh and cinnamon. 

Come, Lady ; while Heaven lends us grace, 
Let us fly this cursed place, 

Lest the sorcerer us entice 940 

With some other new device. 
Not a waste or needless sound 
Till we come to holier ground. 
I si mil be your faithful guide 
Through this gloomy covert Avide ; 
And not many furlongs thence 
Is your father's residence, 
W r here this night are met in state 
Many a friend to gratulate 

His wished presence, and beside 950 

All the swains that there abide 
With jigs and rural dance resort. 
We shall catch them at their sport, 
And our sudden coming there 
Will double all their mirth and cheer. 
Come, let us haste ; the stars grow high, 
But Night sits monarch yet in the mid sky. 

The Scene changes, presenting Ludlow Toivn, and the President's 
Castle; then come in Country Dancers; after them the Attendant 
Spirit, ivith the Two Brothers and the Lady. 

SO NO. 

Spirit. Back, shepherds, back! Enough your play 
Till acX't sunshine holiday. 

191 The source of the river. 



COMUS : A MASQUE. 99 

Here be, without 192 duck or nod, 960 

Other trippings to be trod 
Of lighter toes, and such court guise 
As Mercury did first devise 
With the mincing m JJryades 
On the lawns and on the leas. 

This second Song presents them to their Father and Mother. 

Noble Lord and Lady bright, 
1 have brought ye neio delight. 
Here behold so goodly grown 
Three fair branches of your own. 

Heaven hath timely tried their youth, 970 

Their faith, their patience, and their truth, 
And sent them here through hard assays 
With a crown of deathless praise, 
To triumph in victorious dance 
0"*er sensual folly and intemperance. m 

TJie dances ended, the Spirit epiloguises. m 

Spirit. To the ocean now I fly, 
And those happy climes that lie 
Where day never shuts his eye, 
Up in the broad fields of the sky. 

There I suck the liquid air, 980 

All amidst the gardens fair 

192 without. Accent on the first syllable. 

193 Taking small steps. 

194 Here was a stately court-dance. 

195 When this Masque was first given, the greater part of this epilogue with 
slight changes, was given as a prologue The Spirit in these lines resembles Puck 
of M. N. D., and Ariel of the Tempest. Compare the meter with the song of Ariel 
(Tempest V. 1.) : 

Where the bee sucks, there suck I ; 

In a cowslip's bell I lie ; /,*" r> 

There I couch when owls do cry. 

On the bat's back I do fly, 

After summer merrily. 



100 MILTON. 

Of Hesperus, and his daughters three 196 

That sing about the golden tree. 

.Along the crisped 197 shades and bowers 

Revels the spruce and jocund Spring ; 

The Graces 198 and the rosy-bosomed Hours 

Thither all their bounties bring. 

There eternal Summer dwells, 

And west winds with musky wing 

About the ceclarn 199 alleys fling 990 

Nard and cassia's balmy smells. 

Iris there with humid bow 200 

AVaters the odorous banks, that blow 

Flowers of more mingled hue 

Than her purflecl 201 scarf can show, 

And drenches with Elysian dew 

(List, mortals, if your ears be true) 202 

Beds of hyacinth and roses, 

196 Hesperus ; the evening star. He was also the king of the Western Land, and 
the father of the Hesperides, who guarded the golden apples. See note 30. 

197 Curled by the wind. In P. L., iv. 237, Milton speaks of " crisped brooks," 
meaning winding. 

198 Graces. See L'Al. line 15. Hours, Goddesses, daughters of Jupiter, had 

control of the seasons, 

Universal Pan, 
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, 
Led on the eternal spring.— P. L., IV. 256, 258. 

199 A word peculiar to Milton. See note to 1. 893. 

200 j r j s . see n ote 27. 

201 purfled ; ornamented at the edge. 

202 (" List, mortals, if your ears be true,") etc. By this parenthesis Milton begs 
attention to a mystery which he is to propound allegorically. It is that in those 
celestial regions to which the Spirit is ascending there is not only all physical 
beauty and delight, but also that true love of which Comus had apprehended only 
the vile counterfeit. Yes, whatever of fine and good significance may be dis- 
cerned in such an earthly myth, say, as that of Venus (identified here with li the 

Assyrian queen"), grieving over her wounded Adonis to that Heaven 

contains something to correspond ! Much more is realized there the highly 
spiritual love set forth perhaps in the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, where 
Psyche (the Human Soul), parted from her Cupid, has to wander about disconso- 
late, and undergo sufferings and humiliations, till at last, becoming immortal, she 
is united to him for ever with the consent of all the gods ! In other parts of 
Milton's writings, a highly mystic or Platonic notion of this kind is hinted at as a 
truth beyond the scope of common spirits."— Masson. 



COMUS: A MASQUE. 101 

Where young Adonis 20? oft reposes, 

Waxing well of his deep wound, 1000 

In slumber soft, and on the ground 

Sadly sits the Assyrian queen. 204 

But far above, in spangled sheen, 

Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced 

Holds his dear Psyche, sweet entranced 205 

After her wandering labors long, 

Till free consent the gods among 

Make her his eternal bride, 

And from her fair unspotted side 

Two blissful twins are to be born, 1010 

Youth and Joy ; so Jove hath sworn. 

But now my task is smoothty done : 206 
I can fly, or I can run 
Quickly to the green earth's end, 
Where the bowed welkin 207 slow doth bend, 
And from thence can soar as soon 
To the corners of the moon. 208 
Mortals, that would follow me, 
Love Virtue ; she alone is free. 
She can teach ye how to climb 1020 

203 Adonis was a youth whom Venus loved. He was killed by a wild boar. 

204 Assyrian queeu. Astarte, here identified with Venus. 

205 p S y C he was married to Cupid, whom she had never seen. He visited her only 
at night. Curious to know who her husband was, she lighted a lamp one night, 
while he was sleeping, to look at him. A drop of the oil fell upon his shoulder and 
awakened him, when he left her, saying that he should never return, since Love 
could not dwell with suspicion. Psyche then tried to win the favor of Venus, 
hoping through her to win back Cupid. Cupid's love for Psyche finally prevailed, 
and through the assistance of Jupiter they were married, Psyche being made one 
of the immortals. 

206 This was the seventh and last song. 
It will be observed that five of the seven songs were sung b\ the famous musician, 
Henry Lawes. Oberon, King of the Faeries, says in M. N. D. IV. I : 

'■ We the globe can compass soon 
Swifter than the wand'ring moon." 

207 bowed welkin ; arched sky. 

208 corners of the moon. Corner is used here in the sense of the Latin cornu, 
the horns or points of the moon. 



102 MILTON, 



Higher than the sphery chime ; 209 
Or, if Virtue feeble were, 210 
Heaven itself would stoop to her. 



20y sphery chime. The music of the spheres. 

21 o When Milton was in Geneva, he was asked to write something in an album of 
an Italian, Cerdogni. He wrote the last two lines of Comus, adding the Latin 

verse : 

" Coelum non animum muto dum trans mare curro." 
Masson. who gives the above incident, adds : "It was as if he said, ' Wherever I 
go, the sentiment of the last two lines of my Comus is always my fixed belief.' " 



LYCIDA8.1 



Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more, 2 

Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, 3 

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, 4 

And with forced fingers rude 

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. 5 

Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear 6 

Compels me to disturb your season due ; 

For Lycidas 7 is dead, dead ere his prime, 

, Lycidas was written in memory of Edward King, who was drowned off the 
coast of Wales, the 10th of August, 1837. He had been a student with Milton at 
Christ's College, Cambridge. He was very popular with both the students and 
the professors, and was regarded as a young man of exceptional promise. He 
obtained a fellowship when he had been but four years in the college, an honor 
which may have been partly due to the influence of his family. His father, Sir 
John King, was then living in Dublin, and Edward was on his way home for a visit, 
when he met his death. The vessel had sailed from Chester ; it struck on a rock 
near Anglesea, although the sea was perfectly calm. Very few escaped. 

In the following year, 1638, Christ's College published a volume of verses in his 
memory, written by his college associates. Lycidas was the last poem in the book. 
In the year 1645, the poem was again published in an edition of Milton's poems. 
The following argument preceded it : 

" In this Monody the author bewails a learned Friend, unfortunately <lr<>\vnc 1 in 
his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637 ; and, by occasion, foretells the 
ruin of our corrupted Clergy, then in their height." 

Lycidas is a pastoral elegy ; that is, it is a poem expressive of grief, in which 
the real personages appear in the characters of shepherds. 

2 For three years, Milton had written no English verse. A short time before he 
wrote Lycidas, he said in a letter to his friend Diodati : " I am letting my wings 
grow and preparing. to fly ; but my Pegasus has not yet feathers enough to soar 
aloft into the fields of air." 

8 Wreaths for poets were made of the laurel, the myrtle and the ivy. 

* A reference to the verses he should write at this time. 

5 The death of his friend compels him to write, before his poetic powers have 
matured. 6 heartfelt. 

7 This name is used in the pastorals of Theocritus and Vergil. 

ere his prime. Edward King was twenty-five years old at the time of his death. 

103 



104 MILTON. 

Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. 
Who would not sing for Lycidas ? he knew 10 

Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. 8 
He must not float upon his watery bier 
. Unwept, and welter ,J to the parching wind, 
Without the meed of some melodious tear. 
Begin, then, Sisters 10 of the sacred well ll 
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring; 
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string. 
Hence with denial vain and coy excuse : 
So may some gentle Muse 12 

With lucky 13 Avords favor my destined urn 20 

And as he passes, turn 
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud ! 

For we were nursed upon the selfsame hill, 14 
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill ; 
Together both, ere the high lawns 15 appeared 
Under the opening eyelids of the Morn, 
We drove a-field, and both together heard 
What time the grayfly 10 winds her sultry horn, 
Battening 1T our flocks with the fresh dews of night, 
Oft till the star that rose at evening bright 30 

Towards heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel. 
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute ■ 
Tempered to the oaten flute, 18 

8 The Latin verses written by King which have come down to us are no better 
than the average poems written by college students. 

9 welter ; to be tossed by the waves. 

10 The nine muses. 

11 The Pierian spring at the foot of Mt. Olympus. 

12 Milton expresses the hope that some one may write a poem in his memory 
after he is dead. 

13 Auspicious. 

14 In the language of the pastorals, Milton describes their companionship at 
college. Hill-Cambridge. Fed the same flock ; i. e. they studied together. 

15 Cf. 1/ Allegro, note 32. 

,B Also called the trumpet fly, from the noise it makes in the middle of the day. 

17 Fattenit:?. 

18 Shepherd's pipe. 



LYCIDAS. 105 

Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel 19 
From the glad sound would not be absent long ; 
And old Damcetas z0 loved to hear our song. 

But, oh! the heavy change, now thou art gone, 
Now thou art gone and never must return ! 
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves, 
With wild thyme and the gadding 21 vine o'ergrown, 40 
And all their echoes, mourn. 
The willows, and the hazel copses green, 
Shall now no more be seen 
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. 
As killing as the canker to the rose, 
Or taintworm ?2 to the weanling herds that graze, 
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear, 
When first the white- thorn blows ; 23 
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear. 
Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 50 
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? 
For neither were ye playing on the steep 
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie, 24 
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona 25 high, 
Nor yet where Deva 26 spreads her wizard stream. 
Ay me! I fondly dream 

" Had ye been there,"— for what could that have done ? 
What could the Muse 27 herself that Orpheus bore, 
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son, 
Whom universal nature did lament, 60 

19 Satyrs, Fauns ; a reference to the students at Cambridge. 

20 Perhaps under this name, one of the professors is meant. 

21 Rambling. 

22 Supposed to be a small red spider. 

23 The hawthorn blossoms in May. 

24 There are several mountains in Wales where Druids are said to be buried. 
The Druids were the bards as well as the priests of the early Britons. 

25 Anglesea, an island off the coast of Wales, a retreat of the Druids. 

26 The Dee River, which separates England and Wales, is associated with many 
legends of the Druids and of King Arthur. Chester, the port from which King 
sailed, is on the Dee. 27 Calliope, the mother of Orpheus. 



106 MILTON. 

When, by the rout that made the hideous roar, 
His gory visage down the stream was sent, 
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore ? 28 

Alas ! what boots it with uncessant care 29 
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade, 
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse ? 
Were it not better done, as others use, 30 
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, 
Or witli the tangles of Nesera's hair ? 31 
Fame is the spur that the clear 32 spirit doth raise 70 

(That last infirmity of noble mind) 
To scorn delights and live laborious days ; 
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, 
And think to burst out into sudden blaze, 
Comes the blind Fury 33 with the abhorred shears, 
And slits the thin-spun life. " But not the praise," 
Phoebus replied, and touched 1113^ trembling ears ; u 
" Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, 
Nor in the glistering foil 35 

28 Orpheus' continual lament for Eurydice, angered theThracian women, whc in 
a frenzy, tore him in pieces, and threw his head into the Hebrus. It was carried 
to Lesbos, and there buried. 

2B In these twenty lines, Milton turns aside from the main theme, and asks 
himself why he should choose a life consecrated to duty, rather than one of 
pleasure. His answer is worthy of the Puritan poet. 

30 Are wont. 

31 Amaryllis and Neaera are names given to shepherdesses in the Greek and 
Latin pastorals. 

32 Noble, (fr. Lat. clarus). 

33 In ancient mythology, the furies were distinct from the fates. The three 
latter presided over human destiny: Clotho held the distaff, Lachesis spun the 
thread of life, and Atropos cut it off . In all his poetry, Milton treats the ancient 
mythology with great freedom, and here he makes the line more dramatic by 
giving to Atropos the attributes of a " blind Fury." 

34 Plujebus, another name for Apollo, trembling ears ; this expression was 
perhaps suggested to Milton by Vergil, Eclogue vi., " The Cynthian god touched 
my ear and appealed to my memory. 1 ' Pope uses a similar expression : 

" Before the king, Jove's messenger appears, 
And thus in whispers greets his trembling ears." 

Iliad XXIV. 207-208. 
25 Fame is likened to a gem that is set off by a foil of metal placed back of it, to 
give it greater brilliancy. 



LYCIDAS. 107 

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumor lies, 80 

But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes 

And perfect witness of all- judging Jove ; 

As he pronounces lastly on each deed, 

Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed. 

O fountain Arethuse, 36 and thou honored flood, 
Smooth-sliding Mincius, 37 crowned with vocal reeds, 
That strain I heard was of a higher mood. 
But now my oat proceeds, 
And listens to the Herald of the Sea, 38 
That came in Neptune's plea. 90 

He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds, 
What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain? 
And questioned every gust of rugged wings 
That blows from off each beaked promontory. 
They knew not of his story ; 
And sage Hippotades 39 their answer brings, 
That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed ; 
The air was calm, and on the level brine 40 

36 Lines 64-84 interrupted the pastoral mood, which is now continued. Ac- 
cording to the legend, Arethusa, a nymph, was pursued by Alpheus, a river god of 
Elis. She called upon Diana for aid, who opened the earth for her and changed 
her into a stream. She passed under the ocean, but emerged in Sicily. Alpheus 
followed her, however, and they were joined in a fountain in Sicily. Pastoral 
poetry had its origin in the Greek city of Syracuse in Sicily. Perhaps for this 
reason, Arethusa has been called tbe muse of pastoral poetry. 

37 A river in Italy near which Vergil was born. Vergil was the first Roman poet 
to write pastorals. Arethuse here represents the pastoral poetry of the Greeks : 
Mincius, that of the Romans. 

38 Herald of the Sea. Cf. Comus, note 185. He comes in Neptune's behalf to 
learn what had caused the death of Lycidas. 

39 Hippotades. jEolus, son of Hippotas. 

" At length we reached .Eolia's sea-girt shore, 
Where great Hippotades the sceptre bore. 

The adverse winds in leathern bags he braced, 

Compressed their force, and locked each struggling blast 

For him the mighty sire of gods assigned 

The tempests lord, the tyrant of the wind. 

His word alone the listening storms obey, 

To smooth the deep, or swell the foamy sea." — Od. X. 1-24. 

40 The ship went down in a calm. 



10S MILTON. 

Sleek Panope 41 with all her sisters played. 
It was that fatal and perfidious bark, 100 

Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark, 42 
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. 

Next, Camus, 43 reverend sire, went footing slow, 
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge," 
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge 
Like to that sanguine flower 4 ' inscribed with woe. 
" Ah ! who hath reft,' 1 quoth he, " my dearest pledge ? " 
Last came, and last did go, 
The Pilot 46 of the Galilean Lake ; 

Two massy keys he bore of metals twain 47 110 

(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain). 
He shook his mitered locks, 48 and stern bespake : — 
" How well could I have spared for thee, 49 young swain, 
Enow of such as, for their bellies' sake, 
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold ! 50 
Of other care they little reckoning make 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 51 
And shove away the worthy bidden guest. 
Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 
A sheephook, or have learnt aught else the least 120 

That to the faithful herd man's art belongs ! 
What recks it them ? What need they ? They are sped ; 52 

41 Panope, one of the Nereids. 

42 There was an old superstition that nothing done during an eclipse could 
prosper. 43 A personification of the Cam River and of Cambridge. 

44 his mantle hairy ; this refers to a weed which floats on the Cam. 

45 The hyacinth. The youth Hyacinthus was accidentally killed by Apollo. The 
flower hyacinth sprang from his blood. On its petals were the letters AY, Ai, 
meaning. Alas ! Alas ! expressive of the grief of Apollo. 

46 St. Peter. The keys of heaven are here meant. 

47 massy. See II P. , note 43. 

48 The miter was the official head-dress of a bishop. St. Peter was the first 
bishop of the church. 

49 King was studying to enter the church. 

60 into the fold ; the common figure of the pastor as shepherd of his people is 
here preserved. 
81 How to seek for advancement in the church. M Cared for. 



LYCIDAS. fog 

And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs 

Grate on their scrannel 53 pipes of wretched straw; 

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 

But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, 

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 

Besides what the grim wolf 51 with privy paw 

Daily devours apace, and nothing said. 

But that two-handed engine at the door 5 * 130 

Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more." 

Return, Alpheus ; 56 the dread voice is past 
That shrunk thy streams ; return, Sicilian Muse, 
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast 
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. 
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use 57 
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, 
On whose fresh lap the swart star 58 sparely looks, 
Throw hither all your quaint enameled eyes, 
That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers, 140 
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. 
Bring the rathe 59 primrose that forsaken dies, 

53 scrannel ; thin. Cf . scrawny. 

54 A reference to the Church of Rome. 

55 two-handed engine ; there have been various explanations of this passage. 
Perhaps the poet used it simply to denote some powerful instrument of vengeance. 
In P. L. VI. 251-233, he thus describes the sword of St. Michael : 

With huge two-handed sway 
Brandished aloft, the horrid edge came down wide-wasting. 
Masson suggests that the two houses of parliament, which four years later 
overthrew the power of the Church of England, may be considered a fulfilment of 
the prophecy of these lines. 
6G Alpheus and Sicilian Muse stand for pastoral poetry. See note 36. 
57 dwell. 

68 swart star; the Dog Star. It brought the heat and caused the vegetation to 
wither or become black ; hence the adjective swart. 

Kl rathe, early. " This is the most exquisite flower-and-colour passage in all 
Milton's poetry. His manuscript shows that he brought it to perfection by ad- 
it it i<ms and afterthoughts."— Masson. Cf. with this line, Shakespeare's Winter's 
Tale, IV. ii. 122-125. 

" Pale primroses 
That die unmarried, ere they can behold 
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady 
Most incident in maids." 



HO MILTON. 

The tufted crowtoe 60 and pale jessamine, 

The white pink, and the pansy freaked 61 with jet, 

The glowing violet, 

The musk rose, and the well-attired woodbine, 

With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, 

And every flower that sad embroidery wears; 

Bid amaranthus all his 62 beauty shed, 

And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, 150 

To strew the laureate hearse 6:i where Lycid lies. 

For so, to interpose a little ease, 

Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise, 64 

Ay me ! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas 

Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled ; 

Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, 

Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide 

Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world ; 65 

Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, 

Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus 66 old, 160 

Where the great Vision of the guarded mount 6T 

Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold. 68 

60 The crow-foot. 61 Streaked. 

62 his ; see Comus, note 70. 63 The tomb decorated with laurel. 

64 To ease his grief, the poet imagines for a time, that the body of Lycidas has 
been brought home. 

fiG The sea filled with monsters. 

fi6 Land's End in Cornwall. This was called by the Romans Bellerium. Ac- 
cording to story, many giants used to live in Cornwall. Milton has invented this 
one by the name of Bellerus, as there is no other story of a giant of that name. 

07 St. Michael's Mount is a rocky island near Land's End. It is 230 ft. high, and at 
low tide may be reached from the mainland. Here dwelt the Giant Cormoran, 
slain by Jack the Giant-Killer. There is a priory in this island dedicated to St. 
Michael, who is said to have appeared to some pilgrims here early in the Christian 
era. St. Michael appeared in the island at other times and was considered to 
guard the mount. He was often seen to sit in a chair formed of the rocky-cliffs of 
this island, and look out toward the sea. 

08 Namancos and Bayona are places in Spain near Cape Finistere. " It was a 
boast of the Cornish people that there was a direct line of sea-view from Land's 
End passing France altogether and hitting no European land till it reached Spain. 
Drayton has expressed this in his Polyolbion : 

Then Cornwall creepeth out into the western main, 

As, lying in her eye, she pointed still at Spain. "— Masson. 



LYCIDAS. HI 

Look homeward, Angel. 09 now, and melt with ruth : 
And, O ye dolphins, 70 waft the hapless youth. 

Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, 71 
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, 
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. 
So sinks the day-star 72 in the ocean bed, 
And yet anon repairs 715 his drooping head, 
And tricks 74 his beams, and with new-spangled ore 170 
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky : 
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, 
Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves, 
Where, other groves and other streams along, 
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, 
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song, 75 
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. 
There entertain him all the Saints above, 
In solemn troops, and sweet societies, 
That sing, and singing in their glory move, 180 

And wipe the tears forever from his eyes. 7 '' 
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more; 
Henceforth thou art the Genius 77 of the shore, 
In thy large recompense, 7 " and shalt be good 
To all that wander in that perilous flood. 

Thus sang the uncouth 7!) swain to the oaks and rills, 
While the still morn went out with sandals gray : 
He touched the tender stops of various quills, 

fiS) The Archangel Michael. 

70 A reference to Arion, the poet. lie was thrown overboard by the sailors, but 
the dolphins, who had been charmed by his music, bore him ashore on their backs. 

71 The strain of sadness changes now to one of joy. 

72 day-star— the sun. 73 repairs— makes ready. 74 adorns. 

75 unexpressive— inexpressible. Nuptial song. Blessed are they which are called 
unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. Rev. xix. 9. 

76 See Rev. xxi. 4. Isaiah xxv. 8. 

77 His spirit-will return as guardian of the shore. 

78 Lycidas, as a reward for his untimely death, is to br> made the guardian of the 
shore, where he may have the opportunity to assist others that are in danger. 

79 Unknown. Cf. L'Al., note 6a. 



112 MILTON. 

With eager thought warbling. his Doric lay ; 80 

And now the sun had stretched out all the hills, 

And now was dvopt into the western bay. 

At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue : 

To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new. 81 190 

80 Pastoral poem. Syracuse, the home of pastoral poetry was settled by the 
Dorian Greeks. 

81 At this time, Milton was preparing for his Italian journey. This line may 
refer to that, or to plans for other kinds of poetry. 



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